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THE REMAKING OF A MIND 




Cic^/Ue/ua/A^ H . cLt A/Uma 



THE 

REMAKING OF A MIND 

A SOLDIER'S THOUGHTS ON 
WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 



BY 
HENRY DE MAN, C. deG.,M.C. 

FIRST LIEUTENANT, BELGIAN ARMY 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1919 



5^^.'1 



COPTRIGHT, 1919, BT 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
Published, August, 1919 



AUG.«;3Ui9 




©CI.A580648 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 



FAGB 



I. Before the War 1 

II. The Collapse of the "Internationale" . . 23 

III. Nineteen-Fourteen 4*6 

IV. The Spell of Dogmatism 78 

V. German Patriotism 98 

VI. German Militarism H*^ 

VII. W^hy Men Fought 153 

VIII. Heroism . . 1^1 

IX. In the Land of Despotism 213 

X. In the Land of Freedom 249 

XI. The New Socialism 271 



FOREWORD 

.... Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-en- 
during bards? 

And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles, 

The making of perfect soldiers. 

Be it so, then I answer'd, 

I too haughty Shade also sing vrar, and a longer and greater 
one than any, 

Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and 
retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering, 

(Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last), the 
field the world, 

For life and death, for the Body and the eternal Soul, 

Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles, 

I above all promote brave soldiers. 

Walt Whitman, As I ponder'd in silence. 

As books go, perhaps I might have written a 
book on my war experiences. 

With a record of three years' service at the 
battle front, in capacities as various as those of 
a private in the infantry, a liaison officer, an 
artillery observer, and a trench mortar officer; 
with some experience of the Belgian, British, 
Bussian and Boimianian fronts; four months 
on a diplomatic mission to the Russian revolu- 
tionary government, and six months on a govern- 
ment mission to the United States, possibly my 
war diary might not have proved much more 

vii 



viii FOREWORD 

uninteresting than most similar publications on 
the market. 

As a matter of fact, I believe it would have 
been less dull to the reading pubhc at large than 
this book is going to be. For I intend to make 
this a record of my psychological war experi- 
ences, without any more reference to actual oc- 
currences than is necessary for the understand- 
ing of their reaction on my mind. 

I reahse perfectly well that a book of this type 
is going to appeal to a much smaller section of 
the pubhc than would a miscellany of trench 
stories, or diplomatic revelations in the style of 
war correspondents. Yet, rather than swell the 
number of books of this type, I think it more 
worth while to contribute some fragmentary ma- 
terial for those who are seeking an answer to the 
questions: How has the war affected the mind 
of those who have done the fighting? Have they 
formed any new ideals? And what part are these 
ideals going to play in the reconstruction of 
Europe? 

This book is intended to show the remaking 
of a mind during the remaking of the world. It 
will be a succession, in broad chronological order, 
of the reactions of the war, in its changing mili- 
tary and poHtical aspects, on the mind of a young 
European who has been "all through it." 

It does not claim to be typical as a psycholog- 
ical document any more than the writer himself 



FOREWORD ix 

would claim to be considered typical as a Euro- 
pean. The reaction of the war on men's minds 
is bound to differ widely according to their na- 
tionality, their personal dispositions, their social 
condition, their level of education, the nature of 
their actual war experiences, and so forth. I 
doubt whether anybody could at present give 
first hand personal evidence on a subject Hke this, 
and yet make good a claim that it is typical of 
the European mind at large. As soon as evi- 
dence ceases to be personal, not much reliance 
can be placed on its accuracy. And subjective 
accuracy is all I claim for these confessions. I 
will make them documentarily autobiographical 
evidence with the help of my diary, my notes, 
and my letters to my wife and a few friends. 

I realise that the form I have chosen will make 
a certain demand upon the reader's patience and 
leniency. Apparent inconsistencies will occa- 
sionally reflect the contradictory impressions 
made upon the writer's mind by the diversity and 
rapid succession of experiences; while any un- 
couthness of style or expression may be due to 
the necessity of setting forth my innermost 
thoughts in a foreign tongue, and this in spite of 
the assistance of my cousin, George Greenland, 
Jr., of London, who suggested numerous im- 
provements in my manuscript. Nevertheless, I 
have thought that it was better to sacrifice form 
to the recording of my impressions in the order 



X FOREWORD 

in which they occurred, and whilst they are still 
vivid in my mind. 

The views recorded in this book are those of 
what in Europe we used to call a socialist. In 
America I would probably be called a radical, 
for I would no more identify myself with the 
Socialist Party of America than with the Rus- 
sian Bolshevik. As such, these views are typical 
only of a minority of the Europeans of the so- 
called educated class; but, on the other hand, 
they may throw some light on what post-war 
socialism is going to be in Western Europe. The 
war has "radicalized" Europe to such an extent 
that a constitutional seizure of power by labour 
in most countries seems to be within the possi- 
bilities of a near future. But whilst giving social- 
ism a chance to pass from the stage of agitation 
to that of reahsation, it has been made manifest 
that, in Western Europe at least, practical so- 
cialism is going to prove itself very different 
from theoretical pre-war socialism. I am con- 
fident that American readers who are anxious to 
gather first hand information on the state of 
mind of European socialists will welcome Hmited 
and fragmentary, but personally sincere, evi- 
dence rather than general descriptions, whose ac- 
curacy is necessarily in inverse ratio to the scope 
of the ground they cover. 

There is another reason why I insist on the 
subjective sincerity of this book. It is because 



FOREWORD xi 

I feel the need to apologise beforehand for say- 
ing things which may hurt the feelings of many 
people. I shall have, for instance, to analyse and 
discuss notions as taboo to the common citizen as 
those of patriotism, heroism, and duty. I trust 
that the constructive aim of this analysis will not 
escape the notice of the reader who will be pa- 
tient enough to follow the story of my mental 
evolution to the end. Yet I am afraid that the 
mere fact of admitting doubt, which is of course 
an essential condition to any analytical thinking, 
will hurt the sentiment of people who consider 
doubting itself as an offence. So let those who 
expect "dulcet rhymes" of me lay this book aside, 
and, following the advice of Walt Whitman to 
"a certain civihan," "go lull themselves with 
piano tunes." The others, I hope, will keep in 
mind that I have learned my lesson on the battle- 
fields of a war which has not only changed the 
map of the world, but also the mind of the men 
who have fought it. And the greatest lesson I 
have learned there was to think earnestly, sin- 
cerely and ruthlessly. Oh, how trivial all I 
thought and did before the war seems to me now ! 
I feel as though I did not really start living un- 
til the constant menace of near death to myself 
and those for whom I was responsible gave life 
the value of sacrifice. It is one thing to play with 
words and theories, and to send them out into 
the world, the world as it was in those times, 



xii FOREWORD 

before everything had to be paid for in blood. 
But it is another thing to see how — 

"That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was 

given 
To corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of Heaven — 
By the heart-shaking jests of Decay where it lolled on the 

wires — 
To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes — to be cindered by 

fires — 
To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation 
From crater to crater — "* 

And then, to have to kill and maim and blind 
human beings on the other side; to have to 
answer the shrill voice of one's own conscience 
with its insistent Why? For at any moment 
one had to be ready to die with this question 
satisfied. And I for one could not do this with 
the argument of the mere accident that made 
me born a Belgian citizen instead of a subject of 
the Kaiser. Having been through this cross- 
examination by Death, and having finally found 
a satisfactory answer to that great Why gives 
one the self-confidence required for saying what 
one believes to be true and good, and the cer- 
tainty that everything is true and good that pro- 
motes life and makes mankind fit for it. 

So all I can say in defence of this book is that, 
as a record of the spiritual life of one out of 
millions of soldiers, it is un livre de bonne foy. 
Perhaps I am too sanguine in expecting that, 
with so limited a claim to the interest and per- 
haps even to the sympathy of the general public, 

* R. Kipling. The Honours of War (A Diversity of Creatures). 



FOREWORD xiii 

it will be welcomed abroad. If I dare to sub- 
mit it at all to the judgment of the American 
public, it is because I have been struck during 
my stay in the United States in 1918 by the 
great and growing attention paid there to all 
aspects of war psychology, I came into contact 
with all sorts and conditions of people in practi- 
cally every part of the Union, and my conclu- 
sion was that in no belligerent country has there 
been more thought given to the philosophy of 
war and reconstruction than in America. With 
the exception of a very few, mostly English 
writers and thinkers, nobody in Europe seems to 
have known any other war problem than how to 
win, 

I am positive in asserting that the majority, 
even of young intellectuals whom I have met in 
Belgian and British officers' messes, have never 
given an hour's thought to the meaning of the 
war from a broader viewpoint than that of mili- 
tary or diplomatic operations. They knew they 
were fighting for their homes, for their country's 
independence — exactly as the Germans thought 
they did themselves — and that was enough. 
Perhaps they would not have found it so easy 
to die if they had begun to analyze further, for 
analyzing means doubting, and doubting means, 
at least temporarily, a weakening of the purpose. 
And there was to be no weakening at all if one 
did not want to be crushed by the "Hun." 



xiv FOREWORD 

In America it was different. It took nearly 
three years to bring the nation to reaHze that it 
had to take part in the war. In the meantime 
its leaders did the doubting and analyzing, and 
they ultimately came to a conclusion inspired by 
a broader viewpoint than that of national in- 
terest. Even after April, 1917, America as a 
Democracy, and to a large extent as a Democ- 
racy of cosmopolitan extraction, had to bring 
her own people to the realisation of the ideal 
issues at stake before the full effect of her inter- 
vention could be felt. Whilst the Belgians, for 
instance, all knew that they had to fight on the 
3rd of August, 1914, because they saw their own 
homes and cities threatened by a brutal invader, 
practically every individual American had to be 
convinced by reasoning that he had to fight, not 
for his own home, but for less immediate pur- 
poses common to mankind. That is why I think 
I may say, without doing any injustice to my 
compatriots, or their European alHes, that Amer- 
ica fought with a wider consciousness of her aims 
than any other nation. Nor did she fight any 
the worse for having that consciousness! 

It is this identification of America with the 
conscience of mankind, more even than her 
formidably increased economic and military 
power, that has made her the umpire in this 
war. And now the day of the Great Settle- 
ment has come, a Settlement which involves not 



FOREWORD XV 

only the fate of empires and territories, but the 
social and moral regeneration of the peoples of 
Europe, once more we look across the Atlantic 
to read America's thoughts. For we need her 
to help us reconstruct, as much as we needed 
her to help us fight. We need the assistance of 
her capital, of her social workers, of her diplo- 
mats — but above all, we need the inspiration of 
her ideals. 

H. DE Man. 

London, April, 1919. 



BEFORE THE WAR 

Vous me demanderez si j'aime ma patrie. 
Oui; j'aime fort aussi I'Espagne et la Turquie. 
Je ne hais pas la Perse et je crois les Indous 
De tres honnetes gens qui boivent comme nous. 
Mais je hais les cites, les paves et les bornes, 
Tout ce qui porte I'liomme a se mettre en troupeau, 
Pour vivre entre deux murs et quatre faces mornes, 
Le front sous un moellon, les pieds sur un tombeau. 
Alfred de Musset, La Coupe et les Levres (Dedication). 

When I joined the Belgian army as a volun- 
teer on the 3d of August, 1914, I was much less 
of a citizen of my native country than of Ger- 
many, England, or France. Since the beginning 
of my student's career my ambition had been to 
become a "citizen of the world." From the age 
of eighteen until a short time before the war I 
had travelled extensively through most Euro- 
pean countries, spent five years at German and 
Austrian universities, one year in England, 
and shorter periods in France, Holland, Italy, 
Switzerland, and Scandinavia. I had learned to 
speak and write French, German, and EngHsh 
with nearly the same ease as my native Flemish 
language. My purpose was to become acquaint- 
ed with the conditions of life, the science and 
literature of the great European nations, and I 

1 



2 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

do not think that many men of my age have 
made a greater effort to come near to the type of 
a world citizen, in the European sense at least 
than I. Even during the three years — 1914 till 
1917 — which I spent mostly in Belgium, I con- 
tinued to take more interest in international poli- 
tics than in Belgian affairs. I used to read the 
great British, German, and French newspapers 
before the home product, and I do not think that 
more than five per cent of my library was occu- 
pied by native authors. 

I want to make it quite clear at the outset that 
my ideal was not cosmopolitanism, but a sort of 
ectectic internationalism. I never felt attracted 
by the shallow cosmopolitanism of those who pre- 
tend to see no difference between nations, be- 
cause all they see of them are a few material in- 
stitutions which they have in common, whilst the 
higher and subtler things that differentiate them 
escape their notice. This is bound to happen to 
the traveller who judges France by what he 
sees of the Paris Boulevards, England by Picca- 
dilly, Russia by the Newski Prospect, America 
by New York's Fifth Avenue, and less impor- 
tant countries by a hasty visit to their ports. 
This class of migratory cosmopolitans only see 
that superficial and in itself cosmopoHtan aspect 
of civiHsation which the Belgian nationalist 
writer, Edmond Picard, shrewdly called "Kell- 
nerism." Kellnerism is as universal as the insti- 



BEFORE THE WAR 3 

tution of the German waiter used to be. To the 
"Kellnerists" the world is indeed one, for a ship's 
cabin or a Pullman car look and smell very much 
the same in every part of the globe. There is no 
more difference between the type and manners 
of the people one meets in a Palace Hotel in 
Cairo, in Brussels or in Chicago than between the 
tastes of dishes one gets there. To the cosmopoli- 
tan all countries look alike. To the internation- 
alist the world is a wonderful living mosaic, deriv- 
ing its beauty from the infinite variety of national 
colouring. A citizen of Europe meant to me 
one who strives to understand and to sympathise 
with those characteristics of every country which 
are an essential element of what, as a whole, con- 
stitutes European civilisation. Therefore, in 
every country where I lived my passionate pur- 
suit was to look, not for what its culture had in 
common with that of other nations, but for what 
was peculiarly its own. To grow acquainted with 
it meant to love it and make it part of my spirit- 
ual self. So I gradually became a French patriot, 
a German patriot, an English patriot, as my 
knowledge of French, German, and English 
civilisation grew more intimate. My European 
internationalism was based, not on a denial of 
nationality, but on a conscious attempt to iden- 
tify myself with the spirit of several great 
European nations. What makes Central and 
Western Europe so beautiful and passionately 



4 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

interesting to my mind is its infinite variety. On 
this smallest of all continents — a mere peninsula 
stretching out beyond the Russian plains from 
the western extremity of Asia — humanity 
shows itself more diverse than anywhere else on 
earth, much more so even than the landscape, 
thanks to the continuous and intricate blending 
of races, languages, institutions and civihsations 
involved in two thousand years of invasions, mi- 
grations and wars. Yet my European patriot- 
ism was not at all exclusive of the rest of the 
world. On the contrary I considered it as only a 
step towards becoming a citizen of the world at 
large, which I so far only knew through litera- 
ture. Walt Whitman gave me a foretaste of 
what it would be to love America, and Kipling 
more than anybody else taught me that contact 
with exotic civilisation was a necessary part of a 
white man's training. 

The love of my native country played but a 
part in my life. It is true that, when the war 
broke out, I found that something in the subcon- 
scious impulses which are after all the main- 
spring of even an^educated man's actions, was 
particularly associated with the land of my 
birth and childhood. These fundamental im- 
pulses, that really make a man what he is, can no 
more be obHterated by later attempts to identify 
oneself with the soul of other nations, than hav- 
ing learnt foreign languages can make one forget 



BEFORE THE WAR 5 

the sound of the mother tongue. This sound, the 
images associated with it, and the instinctive 
Hkes and dislikes formed in those early years 
remain paramount. It takes a strong cause, 
which, like dreaming or death agony, releases 
the strings of self -consciousness, to make one 
realise how much more of these impulses remain 
present and active than one would think. 

Yet although they are associated with one's 
native language and the recollections of child- 
hood, they have little to do with nationality as 
such. They are an essential part of national 
feeling, but no more identical with it than are the 
topographical boundaries of home, or, at the ut- 
most, of the native town, with the frontiers of 
the country. This is' especially the case with 
Belgium, where several languages are spoken, 
and where my native Flemish tongue, or, more 
particularly still, my local dialect, does not iden- 
tify itself with the existence of the State. So 
though my instinctive patriotism would link me 
with my home, with my family, with the customs 
and manners of my class, and with the aspect of 
the small part of the country where I received 
my impressions as a child, it would not do so 
with the country as a whole. 

In so far as patriotism means attachment to 
the institutions and the national spirit of a coun- 
try, I candidly confess that in the ordinary sense 
of the term, I never was much of a Belgian 



6 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

patriot. If I were asked whether the fact that 
I have fought for years with the Belgian army, 
and shared its glory and its sufferings as well as 
those of the whole nation, has not created a new 
tie between me and my countrymen, I am afraid 
that I could only to a limited extent answer in 
the affirmative. There is certainly a very strong 
sympathy between me and those whose suffer- 
ings I have shared, but as far as it is really a 
bond of feeling, that is, based on actual and per- 
sonal experience, it only applies to that very 
small portion of the army with which I have 
actually been in touch, my own men, and my own 
comrades. On the other hand, as far as mihtary 
solidarity is the outcome of conscious thinking, 
it is not at all confined to my own countrymen, 
for I naturally extend it to all soldiers who have 
fought for the same cause. My intellectual sym- 
pathy goes out to the poilu, the Tommy and the 
Sammy and all their alHes, as well as to the Bel- 
gian soldier, and to every one of them in direct 
ratio not so much of their sufferings and their 
courage as of the extent to which their purpose 
in fighting was identical with mine. Otherwise I 
might include the German soldiers as well, who 
certainly have fought as bravely and suffered as 
much as most of us. But this is another story. 
My point for the moment is that mihtary sohdar- 
ity created by the war is either too narrow or 
too broad a feeling to add much strength to the 



BEFORE THE WAR T 

patriotism of a man who never looked upon the 
war from a purely national viewpoint. j 

The only way in which I ever felt any Belgian 
patriotism in the real sense of the word is by 
loving Belgium as a microcosm of Europe. The 
existence of Belgian nationality, or to put it 
more exactly, of a pecuhar Belgian quality of 
civilisation, is a matter of controversy amongst 
historians. There is no doubt that what mostly 
differentiates Belgian culture from that of the 
neighbouring nations is local or provincial char- 
acteristics; whilst the small class who have any 
common characteristics beyond those, mostly de- 
rive them from French, or — in the case of a very 
few — from Dutch civilisation. 

There is no better proof of this than the fact 
that most books by Belgian writers were read 
much less in their own country than abroad. 
Practically all the Belgians who wrote French 
had their works published in France and sold 
more copies of them in Paris alone than in the 
whole of Belgium. The Flemish writers did the 
same in Holland. The reputation of our French 
writers was made in Paris, that of the Flemings 
in Holland, before they attained any popularity 
in their native land. Even certain translations 
into German found more readers in Teutonic 
countries and helped more to advertise their 
authors in Belgium itself than their original pub- 
lications had done at home. Pirenne's "History 



8 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

of Belgium," the standard work of Belgian neo- 
nationalism, was published in a German transla- 
tion and popularised beyond the Bhine before 
it attracted any notice in Belgium; and the 
excellent German translation of Verhaeren's 
poems by Stefan Zweig had made the greatest 
French writing poet of pre-war Belgium more 
popular in Germany than in his own country. 

The lack of a national culture in Belgium, 
however, proves nothing against Belgium's right 
to exist as a State. State and nationality are 
two different things. Switzerland is another in- 
stance of a State, formed of fragments of nation- 
alities, strongly united by their attachment to a 
common political organisation which has for cen- 
turies safeguarded their existence, under condi- 
tions derived from the peculiar natural situation 
of the country and the uniform economic mode 
of living that has resulted therefrom. In spite 
of what I have said above, I do not in the least 
agree with those who consider that Belgium as 
a State is an artificial creation of professional 
diplomacy. There is no doubt anyhow that the 
great majority of Belgians, Flemish or Walloon, 
consider the maintenance of the State as an es- 
sential guarantee for the conservation of certain 
things, and especially the freedom of their local 
and provincial institutions, which are dear to 
them. But these things have very httle to do 
with nationality as a cultural value. The culture 



BEFORE THE WAR 9 

of the Walloons, and of those educated Flemings 
who use French as their usual language, links 
them with France and the Latin world; whilst 
that of the mass of the Flemings unites them with 
the Dutch (who speak the same language) and 
the Teutonic races. 

What they have in common, and what consti- 
tutes the essence of Belgian patriotism, is their 
attachment to certain civic institutions and a cer- 
tain civic spirit. These institutions are the out- 
come of living for centuries, in spite of different 
language and culture, under similar economic, 
poHtical and religious conditions; and this civic 
spirit results from centuries of struggling in 
common for the defence of these institutions 
against continuous attempts at absorption by the 
great neighbouring powers. 

The only plausible theory of Belgian patri- 
otism is that which bases it on those common con- 
ditions and common sufferings, and not on the 
existence of a distinctive and peculiar national 
culture, which is a myth. These conditions arise 
from the situation of Belgium as a natural gate- 
way between the three great currents of eco- 
nomic and cultural life in Western Europe — 
Latin, Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon. They have 
made it racially the melting pot, economically the 
turning plate, militarily the battlefield, politi- 
cally the buffer state, and spiritually the micro- 
cosm of Europe. 



10 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

In a small country like Belgium, with less than 
a century's existence as an independent state, 
and no unity of language or culture based 
thereon, this universal aspect of Belgium's func- 
tion as an element in the progress of European 
civilisation is the only intellectual justification 
of patriotic feeling. It is the theoretical founda- 
tion of the writings of Henri Pirenne, and the 
essential inspiration of our great poet, Emile 
Verhaeren, to whom Belgium stood as the sym- 
bol of the intensive life of the modern industrial 
world. 

The only sense in which Belgian, patriotism 
as a cultural value ever appealed to me, was 
through my appreciation of its historical func- 
tion in the ensemble of European civilisation, 
and through my admiration for the skilful ac- 
tivity of its artisans and traders, the tenacious 
devotion to local and provincial independence of 
its historical heroes, the broad universal vision 
of its great exponents in art and literature, by 
which it strove to fulfil this function since the 
early Middle Ages. The more I loved my coun- 
try in this wide sense the more I was led to value 
and venerate the culture of the nations between 
whom Belgium was the hyphen. Being a Bel- 
gian was thus only a step towards becoming a 
European. 

So, on the one hand, I was far from believing, 
like so many pre-war sociahsts and to-day's 



BEFORE THE WAR 11 

Bolsheviki, in what the Austrian, Otto Bauer 
(the first to attempt a scientific analysis of na- 
tionality from a sociaHst viewpoint), calls the 
naive cosmopohtanism which characterises the 
earlier sentimental stages of sociahsm. But, on 
the other hand, I was equally far from allowing 
my sense of nationality to lead me to jingoism 
or political nationahsm, which consists in the be- 
lief that one's own nationahty has rights which 
the others have not. I was always as disgusted 
by the misuse of patriotism, as a feeling of at- 
tachment to a particular type of civiHsation, for 
the fostering of pohtical enmity against other 
nations, and promoting militarism and imperial- 
ism, as I was by the prostitution of rehgious feel- 
ing to the purposes of worldly domination. I 
was convinced that there should be the same dif- 
ference between patriotism and the State as 
there is— or ought to be— between rehgion and 
the Church. Love of one's own country need 
not involve any hostihty towards another coun- 
try. On the contrary, if it be sincere and en- 
lightened, it should tend to strengthen the ties of 
sympathy between them. Real patriotism has 
an inherent tendency to become universal, just 
as love of individual men and women helps one 
to love mankind. 

It is true that patriotism involves a desire to 
maintain the pohtical autonomy of a nation and 
the pecuHar institutions which are an element of 



12 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

its cultural life, and which may be threatened by 
attack from abroad. As long as no trust can be 
placed in international institutions to make such 
an attack impossible or fruitless, a patriot will 
have to be prepared to defend his country. But 
this does not mean that patriotism justifies any 
and every sort of war. On the contrary if the 
only patriots were those who refused to fight 
save in defence of their country, there would be 
no wars at all — for lack of aggressors. But this 
can only be if each people knows the true rela- 
tion in which it stands towards other nations. 
Have we not seen in 1914?, as often before, a war 
begin between nations, which were all told by 
their rulers that they were fighting in self- 
defence and moreover believed it. For I have 
no doubt that the great mass of the people of 
the Central Powers were from the beginning 
convinced that they were fighting to defend their 
country against the aggression of a wicked foe 
intent on their extermination. So easy is it to 
use the disguise of patriotism for the aggressive 
purposes of commercial avidity, the pride of a 
military caste, or the ambitions of a dynasty. 

Yet my training as a historian had put me on 
my guard against a too subjective or too abso- 
lute outlook on things. In consequence I did not 
feel towards war in general in the same way as 
those who probably formed the most numerous 
class of pacifists. I would call them the ethical 



BEFORE THE WAR 13 

pacifists, for their hatred of war — not any war in 
particular, but war in general, at all times, under 
any circumstances, and from the viewpoint of 
any of the belligerents — is based on the ethical 
principle that no man should kill a man. Their 
most consistent exponents are the Christian non- 
resisters of the Tolstoian type. 

My hatred of war was based more on history 
than on ethics. But, indeed, can individual eth- 
ics be sound if they come into conflict with the 
laws of social progress? Sound ethics must aim 
at making mankind fitter to live. This can only 
be achieved by social progress, that is to say, by 
evolving forms of human organisation, and civil- 
isation which are better adapted to assist human 
society in its struggle with hostile forces of 
nature. History teaches us that this evolution 
is not a logical, but a dialectical process. I mean, 
it is realised, not by straight hnear development 
starting from one cause towards one aim, but 
by a continuous struggle between individuals, 
classes, tribes, nations, races, according to their 
own conflicting interests and ideals. Progress 
consists in the victory of the form of organisation 
that is fittest to survive, because it proves better 
adapted to the fulfilment of human needs under 
given natural circumstances and to the develop- 
ment of material and moral resources. Wars, 
like revolutions, racial, class and religious con- 



14 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

flicts, have been one of the agencies through 
which this dialectical process is accomplished. 

We may conceive of a state of things where 
humanity will have escaped the iron necessity that 
has so far condemned it to the sufferings and 
waste of energy this dialectical process involves. 
The great exponent of scientific socialism, Karl 
Marx, has referred to this possibility as "the 
leap from the realm of necessity into the realm 
of freedom." This is subject to the condition 
that humanity (or a sufficiently important part 
of it to be able to manage without interference 
from the other more backward parts) should 
take real control of its common destinies, sohdar- 
ise its class and national interests, and achieve 
by a common conscious will what is now the re- 
sult of internal strife. We are still so far from 
this ideal that we have hardly begun to discern 
the laws which govern our social life and con- 
flicts. Even our boldest attempts at interfering, 
either by legislation or by freely organised initi- 
ative, with the laws that govern the production 
and distribution of wealth, do not go beyond the 
surface of things. And as to the relations be- 
tween nations or states, at present our most opti- 
mistic expectations are not that we shall see the 
white race governing itself as a whole according 
to the rules of its own will and reason; but that 
we shall perhaps be able to create machinery for 
gradually replacing war by arbitration and con- 



BEFORE THE WAR 15 

ciHation. In other words, we cannot hope as yet 
to make conflicts superfluous or impossible, but 
only to facilitate their solution by the peaceful 
estabhshment of an international court of jus- 
tice to prevent recourse to actual violence. 

Far, then, though we be from this "realm of 
freedom," there is no doubt that it is the ultimate 
aim of all our conscious efforts, as well as the 
logical outcome of the increasing power over 
nature which the unlimited development of hu- 
man resources gives us. All great religious 
movements, as well as democracy and sociahsm, 
are moving towards that aim, though by different 
paths. Religious and ethical movements gen- 
erally strive towards human unity through re- 
forming individual ethics; pohtical and social 
movements, through reforming the exterior con- 
ditions under which men live and which again 
mainly determine this ethical attitude. Ethical 
movements as such have failed so far either be- 
cause they ignored the influence of material con- 
ditions, or else because (when they interfered 
with them through conquering pohtical and so- 
cial power) they lost sight of their original 
ethical aims and led to intolerance and oppress 
si on of freedom. 

Democracy ultimately leads to self-govern- 
ment of mankind as a whole; at least, it is the 
only instrument by which such self-government 
can be freely and consciously achieved. 



16 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

Socialism aims at making the moral unity of 
hmnanity possible by giving society, or some 
form of organisation which represents the com- 
man interest, control over those means of pro- 
ductive ownership of which by private capital- 
ists now creates an antagonism of interests which 
makes the hostility between social classes deeper 
even than that between states. 

It is probably through a combination of these 
three great forces — Christianity, acting on indi- 
viduals, democracy and socialism, on the political 
and the economic conditions of life, that we shall 
get nearer to the ideal of a humanity which, ac- 
cording to Faust's vision of the future, will enjoy 
"not safety against nature, perhaps, but activity 
and freedom." 

In the meantime, however, we are still in the 
"realm of necessity," and any attempt to ignore 
its laws, by giving individual men ethical direc- 
tions independent of the conditions under which 
they live and which it is not in their power to 
alter single-handed, is doomed to failure. This 
inadequacy of the means of the ethical pacifists 
to the end they have in view, as exemplified by 
Mr. Henry Ford's adventure with his "Peace 
Ship," is the tragi-comical expression of this 
logical impossibility. 

Experience then has shown that purposes like 
those of the pacifists who wanted to make all wars 
impossible could not be obtained by mere at- 



BEFORE THE WAR 17 

tempts to reform the ethics of individuals. For 
the latter live in a world where the material con- 
ditions of the antagonism of interests between 
classes and states — originating in the economic 
structure of society — still rule the actions of men. 
There have been situations where those whose 
ideal was the stopping of bloodshed between men 
have yet had to resort to bloodshed in civil or 
national war, as the only means of furthering 
the realisation of their ideal. What democrat of 
to-day, if he had lived in France in 1792, would 
not have been one of the hundreds of thousands 
that answered the call of "la patrie est en dan- 
ger" by taking up arms for the defence of the 
young republic against the champions of divine 
right? Was not the duty of Americans who 
loved freedom equally clear in the Civil War? 
And in 1914 and 1917, was it not to fight for 
peace that men took up arms against the main 
and immediate menace that threatened it from 
Germany? Have we not seen, in the first glori- 
ous months of the Russian Revolution, such men 
as the Marxian Pleldianoff, the humanitarian 
socialist Kerensky, the gentle anarchist-dream- 
er Prince Kropotkine — who had all repudiated 
the Czar's war for Constantinople — preach the 
crusade of repubhcan Russia fighting to defend 
her new freedom against German and Austrian 
invasion, and even carrying, by an offensive re- 
sembling those of French revolutionary strategy 



18 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

in 1792 and 1793, the flag of liberty into the 
enemy's lands? 

If we may judge by results, these lovers of 
peace, who were not afraid of fighting for the 
reahsation of their ideals, or at least of certain 
conditions essential to their realisation, have 
done more to bring humanity nearer to a state of 
things where there will be no more wars than 
have our milk-and-water pacifists, those bleating 
lambs in a world of ravening wolves. Consistent 
ethical pacifists, who applied the logical conclu- 
sion of their principles, and actively opposed 
any warlike activity, such as conscientious object- 
ors and other martyrs of a forlorn cause, may at 
least have achieved the moral result of stirring 
consciences that could only be roused by such 
loud protests. But most of the others have not 
even the sentimental excuse of having been dem- 
onstratively and heroically passive. By declin- 
ing to take sides when millions of men were en- 
gaged in a deadly struggle for the maintenance 
of institutions which are vital to the progress of 
democracy and the triumph of peace ; by striving 
to weaken the purpose of those who fought; by 
threatening to spoil them of the results of their 
sacrifices through advocating an untimely peace 
of compromise, they have done more harm to 
their own cause than any promoter of war and 
militarism could have done. They have justified 
the indictment of the exponent of active pacifism. 



BEFORE THE WAR 19 

Eertrand Russell,* who describes this class of 
people as "those whose impulsive nature is more 
or less atrophied," and concludes as follows : 

"In spite of all destruction which is wrought 
by the impulses that lead to war, there is more 
hope for a nation which has these impulses than 
for a nation in which all impulse is dead. Im- 
pulse is the expression of hfe, and while it exists 
there is hope of its turning towards life instead 
of towards death; but lack of impulse is death, 
and out of death no new life will come." 

Here we touch the bottom of the problem. 
The difference between this class of pacifism and 
my own is not so much a discrepancy of thinking 
as an antagonism of temperament. With my 
natural impulses of activity and combativeness, 
I was, as a pacifist, temperamentally bound to 
become either a fanatic conscientious objector or 
a crusader against Prussian militarism. 

What saved me from being the former, was 
not only the intellectual disposition which I 
largely ascribe to my historical training, but also 
and primarily my native reahsm, inherited from 
generations of Flemish ancestors. Centuries of 
a prosperous, active and free life as artisans and 
traders have given the Flemish mind a very 
marked disposition to concrete thinking, just as 
they have made their temperament sensual and 
their philosophic outlook materialistic. It seems 

* Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight, pp. 16 and 17. 



20 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

as though to live as homines forti et bene nutriti 
on a rich soil gives men that faculty for grasping 
and expressing reahties which has made the 
Flemings traditionally excel in all plastic arts; 
in descriptive literature; sciences, as anatomy, 
medicine, botany, which require observation 
rather than speculation. For the Flemings show 
a distinct inability in abstract thinking, and 
therefore cut a poor figure in philosophy and 
speculative sciences in general. Abstract sci- 
ence, in the same way as music, seems to thrive 
better on a meagre soil, and to appeal most to 
the minds of peoples who, either through lack of 
natural resources or through oppression, are de- 
nied the satisfaction of driving their roots deep 
down into the friendly earth. Be that as it may, 
I think I am not far wrong when in looking for 
the fundamental impulses of my actions, I as- 
cribe the realistic nature of my idealism to the 
practical turn of mind which is in my race. 

In fact, I believe that my opposition to war 
rested, before 1914, not so much on the grounds 
that war in itself was wrong but that it was a 
wrong means to the end I had in view. This end 
I would call SociaHsm — were I not afraid to lay 
myself open to misunderstandings by accepting 
without immediate detailed definition a label 
which covers so many different goods. 

But I hope it will be clear to the reader by now 
that I am trying to explain my actions not so 



BEFORE THE WAR 21 

much by intellectual reasoning as by the impulses 
which determined them. Reasoning served 
mostly to test the strength of impulses, to sift 
them and summon up other impulses to counter- 
act those that appeared hostile to my general 
purpose. Therefore, to comprehend my attitude 
in August, 1914, and later, a detailed prelimi- 
nary description of my political views and ideals 
is as irrelevant as an understanding of the tem- 
peramental impulses which led to them is essen- 
tial. 

My social ideals and my social activities, then, 
were mainly determined by the following causes : 

Instinctive sympathy with the under-dog, the 
result of a certain chivalrous disposition which is 
probably partly hereditary and partly cultivated 
by fatherly education. An intense love of hfe 
and capacity for happiness, which, combined with 
this chivalrous disposition, found an outlet in the 
active desire to make others happy, and espe- 
cially to communicate to them the knowledge 
which I owed to my education as a "privileged- 
born." A certain capacity for intellectual enthu- 
siasm which made me, from the age of adoles- 
cence, disgusted with the crudely materialistic 
and egoistic outlook of my class — and, more es- 
pecially, with the indeed very low moral and in- 
tellectual level of the wealthy classes in my native 
city — and which at the same time awakened my 
sympathy with any movement that, like Belgian 



22 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

socialism, had a strong idealistic and artistic ap- 
peal. A constructive tui^n of the imagination 
which made my mind receptive to schemes and 
ideals of social regeneration (my first socialist 
ideals had a purely Utopian character, and my 
text-books were the writings of William Morris) . 
A combative temperament, which irresistibly 
drove me to action for the realisation of the ideals 
thus conceived; a desire for authority, responsi- 
bihty and command, which still more intimately 
linked up my will and my ambition with the 
social movements towards which my combative 
instincts had driven me. 

These impulses, good or bad, are still mine. 
Eut the war has considerably changed the direc- 
tion and aim of the will in which they resulted. 



II 



THE COLLAPSE OF THE '^'^INTERNATIONALE^'' 

There is no stir, or walking in the streets, 
And the complexion of the element 
In favour's like the work we have in hand, 
Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible. 

Shakespeaee, Julius Ccesar, I, 3. 

On the 1st of August, 1914, I witnessed the 
mobilisation in Brussels at dawn, and in Paris 
that same afternoon. The memory of that after- 
noon remains particularly vivid in my mind. 
The weather was hot and sultry, there was not a 
breath of air, nature itself seemed to be waiting 
in suspense. Huge clouds of a lurid sulphurous 
colour threatened thunder, which never came. 
Shortly after noon, they so darkened part of the 
sky that they gave the light a crepuscular gloom, 
which cast an uncanny opalescent reflection on 
the faces of the crowd. Men and women walked 
about almost in silence with the ghosthke detach- 
ment of people who have suddenly lost their own 
volition and henceforth obey the will of a fate 
which they do not understand, but the hostility 
of which is brought home to them by everything 
around them. A slight, but insistent and nause- 
ous smell, the breath of a great overcrowded city 
in the hot, still air, permeated the atmosphere, 



24 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

as though stealing up from some vast hidden 
putrefaction. Everybody seemed to be labour- 
ing under the sensation that, although people 
were quiet and behaved normally, the visible 
world was no longer the real world. There was 
a great invisible Presence, boding unimaginable 
suffering, that controlled the most trivial word 
and the most ordinary gesture. 

I remember most distinctly how acutely I felt 
this when I was sitting down to supper, on the 
evening of the first of August in the stuffy back- 
room of a little Paris restaurant, with Renaudel, 
Cachin, and a couple of other French Socialists, 
together with Hermann Miiller, the delegate 
of the German Social-Democrats, and Camille 
Huysmans, the secretary of the International 
Sociahst Bureau. After the strain of a long 
meetings which was to be resumed after supper, 
we talked detachedly and almost jokingly about 
indifferent things. We were trying to forget 
what had brought us together, and that Jean 
Jaures, the gigantic mind and will whom we had 
looked up to as the only power that might still 
have averted the catastrophe, had been shot dead 
the evening before, after supping like we were 
in a little Paris restaurant and talking good- 
humouredly to his friends. The drawn, pale 
face and the tired suffering eyes of Renaudel, 
whose devotion to Jaures was dog-like, suddenly 
struck me again and belied the reality of any- 



THE "liSTTERNATIONALE" 25 

thing he said, of anything he might even have 
thought at that time, as we sat talking about 
things that might have mattered two days earher, 
but that did not matter any more. My mind 
then saw Jaures as I had seen him three days 
before at the historic international mass meeting 
in Brussels. I had shuddered then when I heard 
him, at the climax of his almost superhuman elo- 
quence, conjure up the vision of two loving 
young human beings walking together in the 
evening gloom, unsuspicious of the menace of 
death which was already hanging over them like 
a vast thundercloud. We were now all in the 
shadow of that cloud. 

Again the only real thing seemed to be that 
pecuhar smell, which I shall always associate 
with the memory of mobihsation, for the odour 
of the stifling city was blended with the sour 
stench of barracks, coming from old cloth stored 
in close places, and leather greased long ago. It 
reminded one of the savage perfume' of some 
feline beast, and seemed to call forth by asso- 
ciation the ancestral, almost forgotten killing in- 
stincts of men. It was now carried about every- 
where by the men who were being claimed again 
by the barracks and the camps, and who filled 
the streets, the public places, the cars and trains 
with their gaily coloured, but weary figures. 

The acuteness of these impressions was mainly 
owing to the overexcitement of one's fatigued 



26 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

nerves. To this was due one's painful supersen- 
sitiveness, the hysterically hilarious twist of the 
mouth, the vacant stare which I have since so 
often seen on the faces of soldiers under the cloud 
of death that was then lowering. 

The strain of my work during those last days 
of July might indeed have accounted for tired 
nerves. I had taken part in the last attempts of 
the "Internationale," whose seat was in Brussels, 
to prevent a European war. An endeavour to 
hold a meeting of the International Socialist 
Young People's Federation, one of the bodies 
that were in the best position to act, and of which 
I was president, was frustrated at the last 
moment because the Austrians, represented by 
Danneberg, and the Germans, represented by 
Karl Liebknecht, could not find means to leave 
their country. But the International Socialist 
Bureau met at Brussels on July 26th, 27th and 
28th, in the reading-room of the Workers' Edu- 
cation Institute, of which I was then the director. 
Along with Camille Huysmans, I acted as an 
interpreter. As French, German and English 
were used, every speech had to be translated into 
two languages, a procedure even more tiring for 
the interpreter than tiresome for the audience. 
It was one of the best-spirited meetings of the 
International Socialist Bureau which I ever at- 
tended. The goodwill of the representatives 
of the great labour organisations of Europe to 



THE "INTERNATIONALE" 27 

attempt anything that might still be attempted 
to prevent a general conflagration was evident. 
The personal relations amongst delegates of dif- 
ferent nations were excellent. I can still see the 
German Haase, with his hand on Jaures' shoul- 
der, bent with him over the draft of a resolution 
which they were going to move together, and 
which was to be a last joint appeal to the labour 
organisations of all countries, to bring the full 
pressure of their power to bear upon their gov- 
ernments. Two days later, Jaures was assas- 
sinated. Six days later, before a Reichstag 
delirious with warlike enthusiasm, after having 
listened to the Chancellor's announcement of the 
invasion of Belgium, Haase read the famous 
statement of the Social-Democratic Party in 
favour of the war credits. Little did we suspect 
on the 28th,. how quickly and thoroughly the 
Internationale of Labour was to be disinipted 
by bloodshed and treason. 

Yet the very goodwill and brotherly spirit of 
this meeting made it all the more evident that its 
impotence to originate any real action was due 
to an inherent vice of the Internationale itself 
and not to any personal shortcomings of its 
leaders. 

The International Socialist and Labour Con- 
gresses, and the International Socialist Bureau 
that was their executive organ, had never been 
more than federative bodies, linking up autono- 



28 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

mous national organisations for purposes of mu- 
tual help and information. This so-called Sec- 
ond Internationale, whose origin dates back to 
1889, was very different from the first Interna- 
tionale, which existed from 1864 till 1872. The 
latter was a real fighting organisation with a 
central direction, and with a leader — Karl Marx 
— directing the activity of its national sections. 
It could thus be centralised, for at that time the 
socialist movement was still in its propagandist 
stage. In no country had it attained sufficient 
power to form a constant and responsible ele- 
ment of national life. It mostly consisted of de- 
bating clubs, more or less sectarian societies for 
propaganda, or organisations for the promotion 
and conduct of sporadic and short-lived strikes. 
Such a movement might well receive its inspira- 
tion from the unique international centre by 
whose propaganda it had in fact been created. 

The Second Internationale, however, corre- 
sponded to a quite different stage of develop- 
ment. It arose from the desire of national or- 
ganisations, which after the Franco-Prussian 
War had sprung up and attained a certain 
amount of influence in most European countries, 
to get in touch with each other. The direction 
of its development was centripetal, whilst that 
of the first Internationale had been centrifugal. 
And when, after a few years, the Second Inter- 
nationale had attained a certain degree of cohe- 



THE "INTEHNATIONALE" 29 

sion, this was found to be much less strong than 
the cohesion of labour unions or socialist parties 
of a particular country with their own national 
environment. It had been easy enough for the 
early agitators to conduct their propaganda 
along the lines of a cosmopolitan doctrine, but it 
was quite another matter to adapt this doctrine 
to different national conditions, for this meant to 
organise, to gain a permanent influence on the 
settlement of labour conditions, on the legislation 
and administration of a country, and to accept, 
in some way or another, a gradually growing 
amount of responsibility in the conduct of that 
country's public business. 

Thus the Labour Unions and political parties 
which formed the Second Internationale, had to 
adapt themselves to the peculiar spirit of the im 
stitutions and the pubHc mind of their respective 
countries, and even, to accept a certain amount of 
national solidarity with their ruling powers. The 
more national movements thus increased their 
strength and influence in their own sphere, the 
less were they prepared to receive directions 
from abroad. This explains why, in great Euro- 
pean countries with a powerful labour movement, 
like England or Germany, the Internationale 
was of little practical account, whilst in coun- 
tries where the movement was still in its sectarian 
or propagandist stage, like Russia or the Balkan 
states, its resolutions were still an article of faith 



30 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

and a subject of exegesis. The Second Interna- 
tionale, moreover, practically always respected 
the national autonomy of the affiliated organisa- 
tions and never tried to become more than an or- 
ganism for mutual information, voluntary assist- 
ance and free coordination. Its leaders tnew too 
well that it was not equipped for action beyond 
that programme. Unfortunately, however, they 
acted towards the outside world as though it 
were so equipped and thus created expectations 
amongst the masses which they were unable to 
fulfil when the test of action came. This may be 
explained either by the natural propensity of the 
leaders of the International Bureau to put this 
organisation in the limehght and inflate its im- 
portance, or by the equally natural desire of the 
national movements to augment their influence 
at home by adding to their actual strength the 
prestige of a powerful international organisation 
always ready to back them. Anyway, there had 
been of late years a fatal disposition to create the 
impression, especially as regards the prevention 
of war, that the Internationale as a body would 
be capable of decisive action. As a matter of 
fact, very little attention was paid to examining 
the concrete conditions of such action, whilst all 
efforts were concentrated on the demonstrative 
effect of the announcements that were to make it 
appear probable. Hence the habit, which had of 
late become a tradition at International confer- 



THE "INTERNATIONALE" 31 

ences, to escape the discussion of profound dis- 
agreements which would have made the choice of 
common tactics impossible, and mask their exist- 
ence by the concoction and mostly unanimous 
adoption of vague but lengthy resolutions. 

It is not because it could not prevent war, but 
because after letting the world believe that it 
would do so, it proved unable even to attempt it, 
that one may speak not only of the failure, but of 
the moral bankruptcy of the Second Interna- 
tionale. 

It was so evident that its executive bodies had 
no real power whatever to throw into the balance 
of peace and war, for lack of constitutional means 
of coercion of the affihated organisations, that 
the possibility of international action, beyond the 
issuing of a manifesto, was not even discussed at 
the July conference. The manifesto itself could 
be no more than an appeal to the national organ- 
isations to do their duty in their respective coun- 
tries, with the means which they would see fit 
to use. 

I could not help being struck, at this confer- 
ence, with the pitiful attitude of the Austrian and 
Bohemian delegates, whose country at that time 
was forcing on the war against Serbia. Espe- 
cially the late Victor Adler, the leader of the 
German Austrians, and the Bohemian delegates, 
Nemec and Soukup, seemed almost physically 
prostrated. I remember hearing Nemec com- 



32 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

plaining most discouragingly about what he 
called the physical impossibility for the socialists 
to do anything once mobilisation had been de- 
clared. In old happy-go-lucky Austria, whose 
government Victor Adler himself had once de- 
scribed as "despotism, tempered by slovenliness," 
people had been used, even amidst the turmoil 
of the most violent racial and political strife, 
to a certain almost immoral "Gemiitlichkeit," the 
result of which was that nobody ever seemed to 
take anything seriously. But a serious thing had 
happened at last — war. The government, which 
was always on the verge of crumbling to pieces, 
had all of a sudden become a power that disposed 
of the life and property of all its citizens. Even 
the most radical elements were struck with 
amazement and awe when they saw how the huge 
cruel machinery of mobilisation began to move. 
Nemec, the old leader of the Bohemian socialists, 
seemed actually to be struck with physical terror. 
I remember how, for some unexplained reason, 
he kept lamenting about the fact that the horses 
and vans of the transport service of their daily 
paper, Pravo Lidu, had been requisitioned by the 
army, as though this particular circumstance 
were any worse than the suspension of all con- 
stitutional liberties by the state of siege. I think 
he told me this story about four times, with such 
evident signs of discouragement that as far as 
he was concerned this incident did obviously away 



THE ^INTERNATIONALE*' 38 

with any inclination to oppose the Government's 
pohcy. In the Hght of subsequent events, I have 
often remembered this, and especially after the 
attitude of the German and Austrian Social- 
Democrats had set me thinking that lack of indi- 
vidual courage might be one of the main causes 
of their passive attitude. The mere fact of the 
destruction of the party machine by the mobil- 
isation must have appeared to these men, who 
relied on the material strength of their organi- 
sation rather than on the revolutionary spirit of 
their membership, as the annihilation of all power 
and therefore as an excuse for non-resistance. 
Four years later, the same psychological disposi* 
tion of the German people was to account for 
their sudden acquiescence in defeat once the mil- 
itary machine had run down. 

The last attempt to coordinate the action of the 
socialist parties, before the final breakdown of 
all relations, was Hermann Miiller's journey to 
Paris on August 1st, with Camille Huysmans 
and myself. 

When I got up that morning, I little expected 
that I should be in Paris in the afternoon. I felt 
so tired after the hard work of the previous days, 
that I had made up my mind to take a day's com- 
plete rest. I was to go fishing in the country, 
my usual way of reheving tired nerves. Besides, 
I felt that there were some more terrible days 
ahead, and I wanted a day's isolation to let my 



34 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

thoughts settle down a bit and make myself in- 
tellectually fit for the tasks to come. 

As a consequence of the declaration of "danger 
of war" in Germany the day before, the general 
mobilisation of the Belgian army had been an- 
nounced that night by the sounding of church 
bells and by bugle calls in the streets soon after 
midnight. I found it easy to get up at dawn, for 
there was little sleep to be had any way. In the 
streets and on the trolley-car that was to take me 
to the railroad station I must have cut a funny 
figure, with my sporting attire, rod and basket, 
standing like a phantom of bygone peaceful 
times amongst the crowds of reservists who were 
hastening towards the camps and barracks. Yet 
I was determined to have my day's rest, and I 
was in the habit of sticking to that purpose in 
spite of everything once I had resolved it to be 
necessary. But at the station I learned from the 
newspapers that Jean Jaures had been murdered 
in Paris the night before. I immediately de- 
cided to return home. I felt that the time was 
over when one could rest and think and hve as 
before. I reahsed instinctively that now the 
great hostile Fate which so far had only been a 
menace, had struck mankind. There was to be 
no more individual willing, we were all to be 
thrown into the whirlpool of the great Madness. 
Now the first blood had flowed, the spell of sus- 
pense was broken. 



THE "INTERNATIONALE" 35 

Objectively speaking, the coincidence of the 
assassination of Jaures with the other interna- 
tional events may have been an accident. Up to 
now, it is not known whether his murderer was 
the instrument of a French jingo plot, of a Ger- 
man intrigue or of some machination of Czarism, 
to which Jaures' insistence on a purely defensive 
policy was disagreeable. Perhaps he was simply 
a weak-headed man driven to insanity by the 
chauvinist press. But whether the crime was due 
to purpose or chance, later events made it ap- 
pear, what intuition at the time had made me feel 
it to be. The deadly shot that rang out in the rue 
du Croissant that Friday night was to call forth 
a thundering echo all over the world, and arouse 
the Beast of War. 

The diary of my wife, to whom I told the news 
immediately on my return home, and who re- 
ceived it with tears — not the last tears she was to 
weep these four years — bears witness that she 
had the same intuition. The murder of him who 
was certainly the greatest individual power ar- 
rayed against war was a symbohc blow. The 
last chance of peace had gone. 

Soon afterwards I received a call from Camille 
Huysmans, who asked me to accompany him to 
Paris with Hermann Miiller, the secretary of the 
German Social-Democratic Party, who had un- 
expectedly arrived in Brussels that morning. 
Miiller, whom I had known for years, had been 



36 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

delegated by the Executive of his party to get 
in touch with the French SociaHsts and labour 
leaders and report himself back in Berlin before 
the meeting of the Reichstag that was to be held 
on Tuesday, the 4th. We decided that, if there 
were the least chance of a delay on his return 
journey, I should also go to Berlin, if necessary 
by Switzerland, whilst Miiller would travel back 
by Belgium or Holland, so that there would be 
two chances of reaching Berlin. I am glad that 
this proved unnecessary and that Miiller found it 
comparatively easy to get back in time — in fact, 
he was in Berlin on Monday — for otherwise I 
should probably have spent the duration of the 
war in a German internment camp. 

Contradictory accounts of Miiller's mission 
have been published since. German and pro- 
German papers have accused the French Social- 
ists of having received Miiller with demonstra- 
tions of national hatred, and not even treated him 
fairly in their personal relations. On the other 
side, Miiller has been represented as having tried 
to induce the French Sociahsts to vote against 
the war credits under the false pretence that the 
German Social-Democrats were going to act in 
the same way, this abominable treachery being 
part of a plan of German imperialism to disor- 
ganise resistance abroad. 

Both versions are untrue. As. I remained with 
Miiller all the time he spent in Paris, and inter- 



THE "INTERNATIONALE" 37 

preted everything that was said at the two 
conferences we had there, I can vouch for the 
correctness of the following account. 

Immediately after our arrival, Miiller was re- 
ceived by the leaders of the French Sociahst 
party. We first met in a room of the Chamber 
of Deputies, and after adjournment for supper, 
in the office of the paper VHumanite. The re- 
ception Miiller was given, both officially and per- 
sonally, was as cordial as could be. 

Miiller began by declaring that he had been 
sent for the purpose of mutual information. The 
executive of the German Social-Democratic 
party wanted to inform the French Sociahsts 
of the real state of affairs in Germany, and at 
the same time gather information about the 
probable attitude of the French Socialist depu- 
ties on the vote of the war credits. This was in 
view of the meeting of the Social-Democratic 
members of the Reichstag which was to precede 
the full meeting of the House on Tuesday, the 
4th. 

Miiller laid much stress on the fact that he 
could not officially commit his party, for neither 
the executive committee nor the members of the 
Reichstag had met since the situation had be- 
come critical. He could not give any informa- 
tion about what might have happened in Ger- 
many since Friday morning, when he had left 
Berlin. Yet he warned us against a too pessi- 



38 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

mistic interpretation of the attitude of the im- 
perial government; he said that the "state of 
danger of war" was a comparatively harmless 
step, and much less far-reaching than general 
mobilisation. He added that he Knew nothing 
of the mobilisation of the German army, the 
rumour of which had reached Paris that morning. 
As Haase had done in Brussels three days be- 
fore, he insisted on the importance of the recent 
sociahst peace demonstrations in Berlin, and 
gave us to understand that the government, or at 
least the Imperial Chancellor, had viewed them 
with sympathy, and on the whole seemed rather 
inclined to encourage the anti-war demonstra- 
tions of the Social-Democrats. 

I am to this day convinced that Miiller and 
Haase both showed genuine candour in taking 
the "friendliness" of the Chancellor for granted. 
This judgment is based not only on my knowl- 
edge of the personal character of these two men, 
but on my opinion that excessive creduhty 
towards the government was indeed character- 
istic of the state of mind of the German Social- 
Democrats in those days. It is hardly necessary 
to say that this in my opinion is no excuse, for 
lack of discernment coupled with lack of cour- 
age would be anything but an extenuating cir- 
cumstance. 

When seeking a psychological ex'planation, 
however, one should keep in mind that the Ger- 



THE "INTERNATIONALE" 39 

man Social-Democrats were used to being treated 
like dogs by the ruling powers. They were sys- 
tematically kept out of all responsible positions, 
whether in the imperial or the local government. 
There were no social relations of any descrip- 
tion between the Social-Democrats and the 
representatives of the ruHng classes. It was 
notorious, for instance, that a Social-Democrat 
belonging to the bourgeoisie could not marry a 
woman of his class, unless she were a foreigner 
or a Jewess — that is to say, another social outlaw. 
So when suddenly the Social-Democratic leaders 
found that they were no longer bullied, and that 
even the Imperial Chancellor graciously conde- 
scended to talk to them and, seemingly taking 
them in his confidence, gave them to understand 
that he considered them as partners in his game, 
they could not help feeling flattered. People 
such as these were naturally inchned to beheve 
things which favoured the sense of their own 
importance. This is, probably, the main reason 
why the Social-Democratic leaders genuinely 
believed that the Chancellor, and apparently the 
Kaiser, too, were trying, with their assistance, to 
maintain peace. 

I never had any doubt that Miiller was equally 
sincere when he represented his party as pre- 
pared to vote against the war credits. He said 
that in no case did they intend to vote for them. 
"Dass man fiir die Kriegskredite stimmt, das 



40 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

halte ich fiir ausgeschlossen," were his own 
words. There were only two appreciable cur- 
rents of opinion amongst the leaders of his party, 
those in favour of voting against the war credits, 
and those who advocated abstention from voting. 
The latter, however, seemed to him to be a 
minority. 

During the discussion a French Socialist dep- 
uty asked what would happen if one of the coun- 
tries involved in the conflict were invaded by 
surprise. Would there not then be a case of self- 
defence that would justify the vote of the war 
credits in the country thus attacked? 

Miiller answered that he thought this hypothe- 
sis highly improbable. He based his opinion on 
the traditional view of the German Social-Dem- 
ocrats, as often expressed by August Bebel, that 
modern wars result from general causes of eco- 
nomic competition between imperialist powers 
and that the responsibility for them rests on the 
ruling classes of all countries. Consequently, the 
obsolete distinction which some socialists still try 
to make between the attacking power and the 
attacked would most probably be impossible to 
make now. He added that the Franco-Prussian 
War of 1870-71 had shown how easy it is for 
the governments on both sides to represent the 
enemy as the attacking power, whilst the truth 
about diplomatic events usually does not become 
known until all is over. Nevertheless, Miiller 



THE "INTERNATIONALE" 41 

said that should, for instance, Russian Cossacks 
undertake a surprise attack on Eastern Germany 
without any provocation on the German side, 
there would probably be made out a case of self- 
defence that would compel the German Social- 
Democrats to allow their government the neces- 
sary means to repulse the invasion. We should 
not, however, base our probable policy, he con- 
eluded, on a hypothesis of this sort, but rather 
on the assumption that it would not be possible 
to make the necessary distinction between the 
aggressors and the others. Therefore it would 
be desirable for the socialists in all countries to 
adopt a uniform policy. 

It soon became apparent that the French So- 
cialists at that time were practically unanimous 
in considering that the attitude of the French 
Government left no doubt as to its intention to 
maintain peace, and, if it should come to the 
worst, to remain on the defensive. Miiller was 
given numerous facts to prove this. Renaudel 
told him how Jaures successfully endeavoured to 
make the French Cabinet influence Russia in a 
sense favourable to the peaceful solution of the 
Austro- Serbian conflict. Reference was also 
made to the fact, which has since provoked a good 
deal of comment, that by order of the govern- 
ment the French troops were being withdrawn 
to a distance of several miles from the frontier, 
as an evidence of their defensive intentions and 



42 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

wish to avoid provocation. So it seemed un- 
likely that France should play any other part 
than of ^n attacked country, therefore the 
French Sociahsts did not contemplate voting 
against the war credits. Part of them, however, 
might favour abstention, to demonstrate their 
refusal to accept any responsibility for the con- 
sequences of a system of competitive armaments 
which they had always opposed. The conclu- 
sion, as drawn by the chairman of the confer- 
ence, was that abstention from voting in every 
country was the only means by which the Social- 
ists could maintain a uniform attitude towards 
the war credits, if circumstances at the time of 
the vote made such uniformity appear desirable. 
As Miiller had no authority to give or accept any 
pledges, it remained well understood that both 
sociahst parties would act as they thought fit, in 
the light of the "mutual information" resulting 
from Miiller's journey. 

The effect of Miiller's statements could only 
be an inducement for the French Sociahsts to 
rely on the influence of the German Social-Dem- 
ocrats with the imperial government, and to re- 
fuse the vote of the war credits or at least abstain 
from voting for them. This purpose fitted so 
well into the general plan of Germany to disor- 
ganise and demoralise her opponents whilst she 
was herself collecting all her forces for a supreme 
blow, that the suspicion that Miiller had acted as 



THE "INTERNATIONALE" 43 

the tool of the government or of a party abeady 
an accomplice to it, arose quite natm^ally. I dare- 
say, at that time, none of the French Socialists 
who heard Miiller felt any doubt about the hon- 
esty of his purpose. But when a few months 
later the facts of the case became public as a con- 
sequence of an indiscretion from the German 
side, things were viewed in a different hght. In 
spite of all appearances, I am still convinced 
there was never any foul play intended. I admit 
I may err in my belief that Miiller was too hon- 
est a man to have lent himself to such despicable 
felony, and that the party executive which sent 
him was, to my knowledge, not clever enough to 
conceive it. This is a matter of purely personal 
judgment. But there are facts to show that the 
views expressed by Miiller on the 1st of August 
were identical with those held by the leaders of 
German Social-Democracy, at least up to the 
time when he left Berlin. They were quite in 
the line of the party traditions for several years. 
The change that made the Social Democrats act 
in an entirely different way three days later oc- 
curred during those critical days between Miil- 
ler' s departure from. Berlin on the 30th of July 
and his return on the 3rd of August. 

Some of my friends think I should not be sim- 
ple enough to believe that a German may be any- 
thing but a scoundrel, and that it is a mistaken 
sense of fairness to accept the possibiHty of any 



44 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

hypothesis that may be used as an excuse for the 
attitude of German Social-Democracy. Yet I 
persist in my judgment. I also think that it 
provides no excuse whatever for the German 
socialists. The matter with Germany was some- 
thing far worse, as I realised soon afterwards, 
than the wickedness of individual men; and my 
judgment of the failure of German Social-De- 
mocracy would be more lenient than it is now, 
were I to admit that it was sold by treacherous 
leaders. 

In the same way I should think better than I 
do of the German nation as a whole if I believed 
that the Kaiser's responsibility were as colossal 
as one would gather from a study of contempo- 
rary history in the "movie" theatres. The more 
we use fairness in our judgment of individual 
men and particular events or circumstances, the 
more severe our indictment of the system will be. 
And it is to eradicate that system that we set out 
on a righteous war — and won it. 

The story of how, after an arduous and adven- 
turous journey, during which we were arrested 
and escaped once, were arrested again, and re- 
leased after being treated rather roughly by a 
crowd at Maubeuge, how we finally had to cross 
the Franco-Belgian frontier on foot under the 
eye of French gendarmes, does not belong here. 
We reached Brussels on Sunday afternoon, and 
there received the assurance that Miiller would 



THE "INTERNATIONALE" 45 

be back in Berlin in time. I therefore decided 
not to accompany him any further and saw him 
off at the Brussels station. When we shook 
hands on parting, the last connecting link be- 
tween the socialists of the two groups of powers 
was severed. 

I had told Miiller that I would be glad to act 
again as a liaison agent if the war broke out and 
circumstances made it necessary to establish rela- 
tions between French and German sociahsts. For 
I still thought as a citizen of a neutral country. I 
had indeed considered the possibility of Belgium 
being dragged into the whirlpool, but I was too 
absorbed by what was happening among the 
great Powers to devote much consideration to 
what might occur at home. I little suspected, on 
my parting with Miiller, that three days later I 
should be marching towards the front as a rifle- 
man in a Belgian volunteer brigade. 



Ill 



NINETEEN-rOURTEEN 



When the torrent SAveeps the man against a boulder, you must 
expect him to scream, and you need not be surprised if the 
scream is sometimes a theory. 

R. L. Stevenson, Virginihus Puerisque, 

On the morning of the 3rd of August, it be- 
came known that the Belgian Government had 
refused to consider the proposal made by Berlin 
the night before, for the passage of the German 
armies on their march against France. The in- 
vasion of Belgium began immediately. I was 
called to arms for garrison duty as a private in 
the home mihtia. But I made up my mind that 
it was my duty to do the best I could to help my 
country repulse the invasion. As I was a good 
marksman and a fair all-round athlete, this 
meant more than what I might do with the mil- 
itia. So I decided to volunteer for service in an 
active infantry regiment. I enlisted the same 
afternoon. 

Although I believed at the time that my de- 
cision was the outcome of careful reflection — and 
in fact, I did as much intensive and serious think- 
ing as time and circumstances would permit — I 
realised later that I had obeyed sentiment rather 
than thought. One may imagine he is listening 

46 



NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 47 

to his intellect in a mental crisis like the one I 
went through those days, but intellect itself does 
nothing then but voice the deeper impulses of 
instinct and temperament. It was not possible 
to be confronted by a situation so suddenly and 
so fundamentally different from anything to 
which my ideas were accustomed, and yet expect 
the machinery of the mind to act coolly and 
smoothly as if nothing had changed but certain 
premises of a logical process. 

To most of my countrymen, as to most French- 
men or Germans at that time, this meant simply 
to be carried away by the wave of patriotism 
that swept their country. There was, however, 
nothing of the sort in my case. I both thought 
and felt too internationally to act like that ; I had 
more friends in the German army than in that of 
my native country. I was perfectly aware — and 
not only intellectually, but emotionally aware — 
that there was exactly the same appeal to en- 
thusiasm and action in the patriotic feelings of 
the people on either side of the frontier. It did 
not even require imagination to tell me this. On 
Saturday, I had witnessed the scenes of mobil- 
isation in France, the earnest, silent, devoted 
answer of a whole nation to the call of duty. 
On Sunday, as I accompanied Hermann Miiller 
to the station at Brussels, I had been just as im- 
pressed by the sight of a couple of hundred 
young Germans taking leave of their parents 



48 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

and friends, to obey the order of mobilisation. 
When their train left amidst the singing of patri- 
otic hymns and pathetic shouts' of "auf wieder- 
sehn," I was equally struck with the attitude 
of a generation that was gladly going to sacrifice 
itself for a cause in the sacredness of which it 
beheved. On the two following days, I was told 
by friends who had just returned from Germany, 
that the outbreak of war, there also, had created 
an atmosphere of genuine enthusiasm and devo- 
tion to the duty of what was considered to be 
national defence. I have learned since, of course, 
that very soon afterwards, as soon indeed as it 
seemed that the victorious German armies were 
going to sweep into Paris, these original feelings 
became adulterated by brutal "Siegesfreude" 
and the lust of conquest which the newly discov- 
ered knowledge of Germany's military superior- 
ity called forth. But this does not alter the fact 
that on the 4th of August, whatever the rulers 
and the mihtary caste may have thought, the 
mass of the German people honestly beheved 
that they were about to fight for their homes and 
the integrity of their fatherland, and that there- 
fore they were inspired by a staunch spirit of 
patriotic sacrifice. That they were misled does 
not affect the altruistic nature of such a popular 
passion, since it leads to the sacrifice of individual 
safety to a common cause. This is probably why 
its appeal to the sympathy of those who witness it 



NHSTETEEN-FOURTEEN 49 

is so strong that to withstand it takes more inde- 
pendence of character or capacity for cool analy- 
tical thinking than most people can muster. In 
fact, most neutrals who lived in Germany in the 
earlier stages of the war, even amongst those 
whose sympathies would otherwise have been 
with the Entente powers, went through the same 
experience. I have met quite a few Americans 
in 1918, then rabidly pro-war, who had lived in 
Germany and remained there through the earlier 
stages of the war, and who confessed that they 
too had not escaped the contagion of popular 
enthusiasm in August, 1914, and even later. 

My immunity from it derived from my 
knowledge that this enthusiasm existed on both 
sides. Moreover, I had been for years engaged 
in a peace propaganda which was inspired by the 
desire to avert such a conflict as had then broken 
out. And I well knew, as did all those who con- 
ducted this propaganda, that the creation of such 
an atmosphere of popular enthusiasm was an es- 
sential condition to any warfare under the pre- 
vailing regime of parliamentarianism, control of 
public opinion by the press, and universal mili- 
tary service. No government would have dared 
to risk war without having first created this pop- 
ular feeling, and facts have proved that every 
government had at its disposal, directly or indi- 
rectly, the means to do it. 

Yet there was one element of the popular feel- 



50 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

ing in Belgium at the time that made me yield 
to its natural appeal to sympathy. It was very 
different from the intoxication of a people with 
the hope of victory. It was a much more exalted 
feeling than that due to the consciousness that 
Belgium had been forced into war by the un- 
provoked attack of an enemy twenty times her 
superior, with the aggravating circumstance that 
she sacrificed herself for the sake of loyalty to a 
pledge. 

There was a decisive impulse at last I I felt 
such an overmastering movement of repulsion 
against cowardly brutality, of active sympathy 
with the victim of an unprovoked aggression, of 
instinctive desire to share the sacrifice of those 
who willingly gave up everything for honour's 
sake, of admiration for the little plucky one 
against the big brute, that I could not doubt a 
minute that this call came from what was good 
and true in me, and had to be obeyed. There 
was to be no reasoning here beyond ascertaining 
the fact that Belgium was not using her refusal 
to break her pledge of neutrahty as a mask for 
the pursuit of selfish interests or some other un- 
avowed, unclean purpose. And this fact was 
soon ascertained. I could trust my own judg- 
ment as to Belgium's innocence, for if anybody 
could have been biassed against the Belgian Gov- 
ernment, whose internal and external policy I 
had always execrated, it was I. But no doubt 



NINETEEN-rOURTEEN 51 

was possible here : all Belgium*s immediate inter- 
ests were for yielding to Germany's demand to 
let her pass; honour alone was against it. The 
sacrifice was too evident and too grievous to al- 
low any suspicion as to the purity of the motives 
that inspired it. 

To a systematically suspicious mind, only one 
alternative remained possible: Belgium's refusal 
to yield to the German ultimatum might have 
been a platonic demonstration which, whether 
followed or not by a feint of mihtary resistance, 
would have safeguarded her against the suspicion 
on the French and British side of her having been 
Germany's accomplice, and at the same time 
have allowed her to expect reparation from, and 
reconciliation with, a victorious Germany, whose 
plans of conquest would not have been seriously 
hindered. 

To entertain such a suspicion would have been, 
as events showed very soon afterwards, unjust 
towards the men who then formed the govern- 
ment. I dare say that on both sides — the ruling 
conservative, Boman Catholic party on the one 
hand, and the progressive, labour and radical 
opposition on the other — there was an equal 
amount of pleasant sm-prise in finding that the 
other party too had acted, not on partisan mo- 
tives, but as men individually hurt in their 
honour by an insult to the State of which they 
were citizens. 



I 



52 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

German diplomacy had started on its great 
adventure under evil auspices indeed. By show- 
ing right at the outset the brutality of its pur- 
pose and the ruthlessness of the means which 
it intended to use, it managed to weld into a 
common attitude of desperate resistance two 
powers which otherwise it might perhaps have 
tried successfully to keep neutral or even favour- 
ably disposed: the Labour Party and the Roman 
Catholics. 

These two antagonistic powers — for in Bel- 
gium the Roman Catholic Church is essentially 
a political power, identified with the Conserva- 
tive Party — together represent practically the 
whole nation. The Labour Party — probably 
the strongest of its kind in pre-war Europe 
— had always been outspokenly socialistic, with 
particularly accentuated internationalist and an- 
timilitarist sympathies. The headquarters of the 
Internationale were in Brussels, so that here the 
Germans might have found a natural channel to 
influence labour and socialism the world over. 
Belgian sociahsm was traditionally opposed to 
any manifestation of attachment to the State, to 
such an extent that before the war the waiving of 
her national flag or the strains of the national 
anthem would have been taken as an insult in 
labour circles. Although the Labour Party advo- 
cated general popular armament, it did so more 
to oppose the prevaihng system of army organ- 



NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 53 

isation, which was calculated to give the ruling 
classes a willing instrument to support their 
domination, than to help create a strong weapon 
for national defence. To the latter it paid in- 
deed little practical attention. Lastly, the rela- 
tions between the Belgian Labor Party and the 
German Social-Democrats were particularly in- 
timate and cordial, and German socialism was 
always looked up to for guidance, example and 
help. 

It is true that in the Walloon part of the coun- 
try, which includes the main industrial districts 
and socialist strongholds, there was always a 
great admiration and love for France and 
French democratic ideals. But this might have 
been neutralised by the equally strong and nat- 
ural sympathy of the Flemish for their Teutonic 
cousins, and by the general execration of Russian 
Tzarism, which was just then being used in Ger- 
many as a means to induce the Social-Democrats 
to support the "holy -war of Teutonic culture 
against Russian barbarism." A German diplo- 
mat with no more than the ordinary amount of 
cunning might thus well have been tempted to 
use the power of Belgian socialism to create an 
atmosphere of neutrality and moral isolation 
around the enemy. 

The same is true of the Roman Cathohc Party 
in Belgium, to a greater extent even, for here it 
was more than neutrahty, it was sympathy and 



54 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

moral support that Germany might have ex- 
pected if she had laid her plans more shrewdly. 
Here she might have relied on the instinctive 
solidarity of purpose between the supporters of 
the principle of centraHsed and autocratic au- 
thority in ecclesiastical and moral matters, as 
represented by the Roman Church, and the 
censer-bearers of political despotism, as repre- 
sented by the Kaiser. The subsequent attitude 
of many dignitaries of the Roman Catholic 
Church in neutral countries and in Italy, Ire- 
land and South America, has been significant 
enough in this respect. Kaiserism and Popery 
were the alhed crusaders of feudalism, temporal 
and spiritual. That the rulers of Germany 
were aware of this natural sympathy is evi- 
denced by an utterance of Kaiser Wilhelm him- 
self in the first year of the war^ which was duly 
reported to the Belgian Government at the time. 
The Kaiser, whilst on a tour along the Western 
front and through occupied Belgium, paid a visit 
to the famous Abbey of Benedictine monks at 
Maredsous. He had a talk with the Prior, who 
happens to be a celebrated scholar, one of the 
most authorised representatives of Cathohcism 
in Belgium. The Kaiser unbosomed himself to 
him by complaining bitterly about the lack of 
understanding and sympathy the Belgian Catho- 
lics had shown him. "And'yet," he said, "do we 
not all stand for the maintenance of the same 



NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 55 

principle, authority? Is it not a pity that we 
have been divided?" 

Apart from these general reasons, there are 
other motives which might have made it worth 
while for Germany to try to win the support of 
the Belgian Catholics. They looked up to the 
"Centrum," the political party of the Roman 
Catholics in Germany, much in the same way as 
the Belgian Socialists did to German Social- 
Democracy. Their stronghold was in the Flem- 
ish part of the country, where there was a distinct 
racial sympathy for Germany. France was in- 
tensely unpopular with them, for pohtical and 
isocial reasons as the Mother of Revolutions, and 
for ecclesiastical motives as the pioneer of the 
emancipation of the State from clerical power. 
Especially since the separation of State and 
Church and the expulsion of the congregations 
that had rebelled against the law on popular edu- 
cation, there was hardly a sermon preached in a 
Belgian church which did not refer to France as 
an instrument of the devil and a hotbed of cor- 
ruption and infidelity. Germany, on the con- 
trary, now that the last echoes of the Bismarck- 
ian "Kulturkampf" had long ago died out, was 
praised for the particular friendhness which the 
imperial government had of late shown towards 
the Church. Last, but not least, the Hapsburg 
dynasty, which had so much contributed to 
strengthen the political position of the Church in 



56 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

the eighteenth century, when Belgium was under 
Austrian rule, was held in veneration by all Bel- 
gian Catholics. AVhen Austria declared war on 
Serbia, the newspapers controlled by the Cath- 
olic government took the Austrian side out- 
spokenly, and played a conspicuous part in the 
vituperation of the Serbs. 

Yet, after the German ultimatum, there was 
only one Belgian Cathohc — old Count Woeste, 
the leader of the reactionary wing of his party — 
who declared himself in favour of a policy of pla- 
tonic protest, without active resistance to Ger- 
many's plans. He found nobody to follow him. 
On the contrary, all through the German occu- 
pation, the Belgian Catholics, headed by Cardi- 
nal Mercier, were a very energetic element of 
patriotic resistance, with the exception of a very 
small part of the Flemish low clergy who sym- 
pathised with the so-called activist movement 
fostered by the German Government. 

Thus in a few hours Germany transformed a 
peace-loving nation, which had always been fa- 
vourably disposed towards her, over whom she 
had established an intellectual and commercial 
influence almost amounting to a protectorate, and 
which was anything but prone to militant nation- 
alism, into her bitterest foe. There is something 
almost pathetic in the curse on Germany's des- 
tiny that made her, right at the outset, disclose 
her true purpose by an act that outraged the con- 



NIlSrETEEN-FOURTEEN 57 

science of the whole world, nay, that caused the 
world to realise that it had a conscience — the act 
that made a Chinese child say: Belgium is not a 
road, it is a country. It was the more pathetic, 
in that it turned a nation of pacifists and anti- 
militarists into a nation of soldiers. 

It was not the accident of my Belgian birth, it 
was the fate that turned Belgium into the symbol 
of violated right that made me a soldier. I think 
I should have felt and acted exactly the same 
way if I had not been a Belgian. True, if I had 
lived thousands of miles away, the strength of 
my impulse would have been less, for exactly the 
same reason that makes one more impressed by 
a quarrel next door than by a catastrophe that 
kills ten thousand people on a faraway conti- 
nent ; but the nature of the impulse would have 
been the same. If you walk along the street and 
see a big hooligan attack a weak, unsuspecting 
woman, you do not stop to consider who the 
woman is. You go for the bully. That was ex- 
actly the impulse that moved me, and as I was 
right in the middle of the fray, it was strong 
enough to draw me in. 

It mattered precious little what my view of 
Belgian patriotism was. Who cares who the 
woman is? I have admitted already that I had 
several reasons to find fault with her. As a 
Socialist, and as a supporter of Flemish aspira- 
tions in favour of cultural autonomy, there were 



58 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

many reasons why my patriotism was not ortho- 
dox. I wished fervently to see all frontiers dis- 
appear and all civiUsed nations become part of 
one vast union; but in the meantime, I felt that 
the same principles of common honesty that are 
a condition to organised life amongst individuals 
should equally apply to relations between states. 
Indeed, I cannot conceive of any higher form of 
international organisation — call it if you will, the 
United States of the World — that could develop 
except from a gradual recognition and universal 
apphcation of those same principles of mutual 
fairness and loyalty. I certainly found many 
faults in Belgian institutions, laws, and charac- 
teristics; but after all, it was up to the Belgian 
people to change these things if they wanted to. 
Their Constitution, which provides for popular 
self-government, gives them the means to do it. 
Nothing, however, can be done unless that self- 
government be made safe against the aggression 
of a foreign power. There was such a bitter so- 
cial struggle in Belgium for the improvement of 
labour conditions and labour legislation, which 
were very much behind those of the neighbouring 
great countries, that Belgian Socialists often 
quoted Jules Guesde's saying that the wealthy 
and the poor of a nation have but one thing in 
common: the battlefield. But even though this 
should be so, is it not an essential interest of both 
combatants that this battlefield should be kept 



NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 59 

free from foreign interference? Is it not of 
equal importance to them that the rules of the 
tournament, as set by the community of political 
institutions, of speech and traditions, should not 
be upset? 

As to the grievances of the Flemings, they 
were serious enough, but since the Belgian Con- 
stitution puts the Flemish and French languages 
on the same footing, and since the Flemings form 
a majority of the nation, there is not one of these 
grievances — lack of a Flemish University, insuf- 
ficient administrative autonomy, exclusive use of 
French in the army, etc. — which could not be re- 
dressed by using the liberties for propaganda and 
facilities for amending the law, which the Consti- 
tution of Belgium provides. More than that, the 
protection of these liberties and facilities against 
Prussianism appeared as an essential condi- 
tion to the realisation of Flemish aspirations. 
Whether the Flemings liked an army command- 
ed in French or not, whether they preferred 
something different from a common army or a 
common administration altogether, mattered lit- 
tle, since the German invasion compelled them 
to use whatever army they had to defend the 
democratic institutions that were essential to any 
increase of their cultural autonomy. 

But what is the use of going into such details 
of argument? Regardless of any particular de- 
sires or ideals as to what our state ought to be 



60 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

and ought to do, there, in spite of all its imper- 
fections and shortcomings, it stood and had to be 
maintained if any improvement were to be pos- 
sible. It was being attacked by another, larger 
state, for having refused to break a pledge to 
which this other state itself had been a party. It 
had either to admit that any state stronger than 
itself, might, regardless of right and treaties, 
force its will upon it, or else to fight. It chose to 
fight, and the whole people backed it. 

To defend Belgium was, therefore, to fight 
for something very much more important than 
that this particular country should continue to 
exist. It meant fighting for the right of nations 
to choose their own form of government, and to 
have that form of government respected by all 
other states in accordance with the principles of 
common fairness and loyalty to promises, which, 
by universal consent, govern the relations of men. 

The stronger my reluctance, as an internation- 
alist and a socialist, to follow the lead of those 
who believed in "my country, right or wrong," or 
to consider the problem of the war from the view- 
point of any particular nation, the clearer was 
my realisation that the wrong done to Belgium 
was but a symbol of the menace of German ag- 
gression to what is an essential condition to so- 
cialism, as I conceived it, and to internationahsm 
itself. Not until I shouldered a rifle did I know 
what it meant to be a citizen of the world. 



NINETEEN-rOURTEEN 61 

The first three or four months of the war were 
a period of purely animal life, void of all think- 
ing. This period covers the first phase of opera- 
tions, that of open warfare which preceded the 
stabilisation of the Belgian front on the Yser. I 
was first a private in the infantry; later a cor- 
poral; and then a sergeant. The actual hard- 
ships were terrible, much more so than anything 
that happened to any army since, and could prob- 
ably only be compared to those of the Serbian 
army in its great retreat. Yet these months 
were one of the happiest times of my life. 

This was mostly due to purely physiological 
reasons: the joy of open-air life, of continuous 
exercise and the exhilaration of physical adven- 
ture. Add to this the happiness of comradeship, 
the novelty and freedom of our unconventional 
life, and the smiling, fatahstic thoughtlessness 
created by constant danger under continuously 
varying circumstances. I felt like a boy of fif- 
teen throughout. Even if I had had time to 
bother about anything but the elementary needs 
of physical life, I do not think I should have 
done so. I felt free from all cares. Only one 
thing mattered: to remain ahve if possible; and 
that could not be helped by worrying. 

Those of my comrades who belonged to the so- 
called educated classes all felt more or less the 
same way, with the exception, of course, of those 
who were physically unable to stand the hard- 



62 THE REMAKIlSrG OF A MIND 

ships of our life. I must, however, have felt the 
happiness of it with more than usual intensity. 
Thanks to the strength of my health, my train- 
ing as a sportsman, and my naturally sanguine 
and gay disposition, the physical sufferings ap- 
peared to me but as the magnified vicissitudes of 
a picnic. The filth at one time became very dis- 
agreeable, but it helped one to appreciate all the 
more the value of a pail of cold water and some 
of the main elementary joys of life connected 
with its use. I have always strongly resented 
the necessity of doing intellectual work, a real 
torture to me at times. My native instincts and 
my bodily constitution are those of a rancher, of 
a hunter — or of a soldier. I felt unspeakable 
delight at having at last struck a way of living 
that suited these fundamental instincts. 

Some of the happy carelessness of those days 
may also have been due to the certainty that, by 
obeying a good impulse — and the happiness at- 
tained thereby proved that it was good — I re- 
lieved myself of the burden of self -questioning. 
I was moreover no more than a particle of a huge 
machine over which I had no control. I did not 
even know enough of its working to be able to 
form any ideas about it. I certainly knew less 
about war operations than the man in the street 
ten thousand miles away from the front; for I 
hardly ever caught sight of a newspaper, and all 
that I knew about the operations I was engaged 



NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 63 

in was what concerned my own company or bat- 
talion. I never dreamt when we were harassing 
the German hnes of communication early in Sep- 
tember, that we were helping to win the battle 
of the Marne. I did not know that I had been 
in the retreat of the Belgian army from Antwerp, 
until it was all over. All I had to do was to obey 
orders, and get as many hours of sleep as I could 
to rest my tired body. With a clear conscience 
and the constant immanence of death, physical 
wants and bodily pain became in themselves a 
joy. So great is the dehght of a soul at peace 
with itself, since it has found in submission to 
duty a single all-dominating purpose. 

It did not require a great effort of imagination 
to realise that my chances of seeing it through 
unhurt were but slight. I remember having dis- 
cussed this subject more than once with some of 
my comrades, detachedly and almost jokingly, 
but with the precise judgment of surgeons de- 
bating a "case." My conclusion was that if I 
might choose between the certainty of losing a 
limb and the uncertainty of my fate as a soldier, 
the odds were such that the safest choice would 
have been the loss of a limb. This careless state 
of mind may seem strange in view of the fact 
that I had left a wife and child at home. I feel 
bound to confess that, much though I loved them, 
I bothered very little about them in those days. 
My wife had considered my enhstment as a mat- 



64 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

ter of course and been very brave, and my atti- 
tude of mind towards her was exactly the same 
as towards a soldier-comrade : she too had to take 
chances. She told me much later that she had 
never been really worried about me either; the 
certitude that, whatever happened, I would not 
get killed, never left her. I can only explain this 
mutual freedom from fear by the fact that we 
were both exalted with fighting determination 
to such a pitch as to trust bhndly in Fate. Such 
can be the power of spirit over flesh. 

It was about this time that Karl Liebknecht 
came to Brussels and saw my wife. He had been 
my most intimate friend during my stay in Ger- 
many, when he was already concentrating his 
efforts on antimihtarist propaganda. His en- 
deavor to bring the Social-Democratic Party to 
an attitude of active opposition against the ultra- 
militarist tendencies of imperial Germany had 
then met with little success. He hoped, however, 
that the younger generation would be more re- 
ceptive, and therefore took a leading part in the 
socialist young people's movement, which about 
that time began to assume a certain importance 
in Germany. My efforts were directed towards 
the same aim. Together, we created the Inter- 
national Socialist Young People's Federation, 
of which Liebknecht was president and I secre- 
tary, and which we mainly considered as a means 
to promote an antimilitarist spirit in Germany 



NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 65 

and Austria. I collaborat-ed with him in writing 
the pamphlet "Mihtarismus und Antimihtar- 
ismus," for which he was sentenced to four years' 
imprisonment in a fortress. 

Our friendship was, however, based on some- 
thing more than intellectual collaboration. I 
never agreed with all his ideas, thinking him 
somewhat crankish and too impulsive at times. 
I am sm^e, nevertheless, that he would never have 
become the fanatic he was, in the last bolshevik 
stage of his career, had it not been for the over- 
straining of his nerves, caused by years of perse- 
cution, that made him forget everything save 
his fury at the cowardice and hypocrisy of the 
German Majority Socialists. Yet it was that 
very downrightness and idealistic impulsiveness 
which strongly differentiated him from the Ger- 
mans of his generation, that made me like him 
so. He, likewise, showed himself very partial to 
me. He was a great admirer of Belgian social- 
ism, and he often said that he expected the Bel- 
gians to give European socialism an intellectual 
lead, since they combined the thoroughness of 
mind of the Teutonic races with the energy of 
the Anglo-Saxons and the fiery enthusiasm of 
the Latins. 

I had not heard from him since he spent a 
couple of days with me in Brussels, a few weeks 
before the war. All I knew about his attitude 
towards the war was that he was one of the 



66 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

fourteen Social-Democratic members of the 
Reichstag who had abstained from voting the 
war credits on August 4th. In the second week 
of September, he visited occupied Belgium to 
learn the truth about the mutual accusations of 
atrocities. It is this journey that convinced him 
of the falsehood of the German stories about 
franc-tireurs, and of the truth of the atrocities 
perpetrated by the German soldiery. His de- 
termination openly to oppose war dates from 
that visit. 

On his arrival in Brussels, he went to see my 
wife. Two Belgian Socialist deputies, who had 
accompanied him from Liege, were with him. 
They treated him very cordially, since he had 
given unmistakable evidence of his friendly feel- 
ings, not only by his statements in broken 
French, but by his successful intervention in 
favour of ill-treated Belgian civilians threatened 
with execution by the German troops at Andenne 
and near Tirlemont. These good people were 
somewhat surprised to find that my wife received 
Liebknecht rather coolly, and for a couple of 
hours talked to him in German in a tone of vio- 
lent reproach, which Liebknecht received with 
evident signs of emotion. Tears filled his eyes 
when she told him what she thought of the atti- 
tude of the German Social-Democrats. He 
apologised for not having voted against the war 
credits himself by saying that he was at the time 



.^ 



NINETEEN-FOURTEElSr 67 

too badly informed, but he had since reahsed that 
Germany had been the aggressor and that Bel- 
gium's resistence was justified. When she told 
him that I, the antimilitarist, had become a sol- 
dier in order to fight against militarism, he said 
that I was right, and that in my place he would 
have done the same. This statement was report- 
ed to me a few weeks later, and did more to 
strengthen me in my attitude than anybody else's 
opinion would have done. 

I was to need strengthening sooner than I ex- 
pected. After the battle of the Yser, the monot- 
onous routine of trench warfare succeeded the 
enthusiasm of the first three months of open 
fighting. I was sent to the rear as an instructor 
and spent three months drilhng recruits in camps 
in Normandy. Everything was in a terrible 
state of disorganisation there, and the hardships 
which had been found so easy to bear in the brunt 
of fighting now became almost intolerable, all the 
more so as they were avoidable, and largely due 
to the incapacity for organisation and improvisa- 
tion of the military bureaucrats in the rear, who 
had found themselves suddenly transplanted 
from their old Belgian barracks into a foreign 
environment. The loss of many brave comrades 
fallen in battle, which I had hardly time to think 
about when it happened, began to weigh heav- 
ily on my mind, now that I could collect my 
thoughts. Altogether, it was a time of depres- 



68 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

sion, a natural reaction following the exaltation 
of the beginning. So I seized the first oppor- 
tunity that presented itself to return to the front, 
as a Belgian liaison officer attached to a British 
division in Flanders. Such high expectations 
were aroused at that time by the ide*a of the 
"spring offensive" — expectations that were to be 
renewed with equal want of success for four 
years — that I little suspected that I would have 
to remain for fourteen months in the same sector, 
with five different divisions relieving each other 
in succession. It was the famous "Plug Street 
Wood" area, a much quieter part of the front 
than the Ypres salient proper or most places 
further south, but "lively" enough to make such 
a long stay without the interruption of a period 
in rest billets somewhat of a strain on the nerves. 
Above all, it was a dreary country. There was, 
along the line of trenches, the desolation of the 
muddy fields of Flanders; while our billets were 
situated amid the gloom and sordidness of the 
dirty industrial villages, with their endless rows 
of poor brick-houses. It well deserved to be the 
scene of Captain Bairnsfather's first inspiration 
as a caricaturist of the grim humour of the front. 
The whole spirit of the "Plug Street Wood" 
area lives in his deservedly popular cartoons 
"Staying at a Farm," "This Muddy War," "Di- 
recting the Way at the Front," and many others. 
This period of trench warfare, that, including 



NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 69 

my subsequent return to the front of the Belgian 
army as a trench mortar officer covers the whole 
of 1915, 1916 and part of 1917, was a time of 
painful doubting, searching introspective analy- 
sis, and uninterrupted struggle against moral 
depression. 

At first the war had appeared to me as a mere 
fight of the Belgians and the French, helped by 
England, for the repulse of invasion. Our "war 
aim" was to protect our homes, the integrity of 
our territory, the existence of our institutions, 
our nationality itself, against aggression from a 
power that had set out to annihilate them by a 
sudden, masterly stroke. This aim would have 
been attained by beating the invader back behind 
his own frontier. 

The stabilisation of the Western front, how- 
ever, soon made it appear that a purely strategi- 
cal decision of that sort was not to be expected. 
At the same time it became evident that there 
were other issues involved, incomparably more 
important and intricate than the mere clearing of 
the invaded territory from the armies of occupa- 
tion. 

There was Russian Czardom, the presence of 
which amongst the Entente powers did not fit in 
with the theory, based on an impulsive general- 
isation of the case of France and Belgium, that 
we were fighting in defence of advanced demo- 
cratic institutions against the aggression of a 



70 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

backward despotic regime. Then England, her 
colonies and her dominions soon began to throw 
such a weight into the balance, that the war de- 
veloped primarily into a contest of power be- 
tween the British and the German empires. The 
Japanese undertaking against Kiau-Tshau, the 
expeditions against the German colonies all over 
the world, the fighting on the Egyptian border, 
in Mesopotamia and on the GalHpoli Peninsula 
clearly showed that something more was at stake 
than the possession of Belgium and the North of 
France. The British fleet, which in the begin- 
ning had been but a means to protect the lines 
of communication between the old country, her 
expeditionary force and her Empire, and to keep 
the German navy from the scene of action, now 
became an offensive weapon in an economic war 
against blockaded Germany, a war which was 
much more terrible and promised ultimately to 
be much more decisive than any operations on 
land. Germany retahated by starting on her 
submarine campaign. The whole world began 
to take sides. Countries entered the lists whose 
interests were not, like England's, directly af- 
fected by the territorial extension of Germany 
along the shores of the North Sea and the Chan- 
nel. Italy threw in her lot with the Entente. 
Turkey and Bulgaria sided with the Central 
Powers. In practically every neutral country, 
America included, the propaganda by the bel- 



NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 71 

ligerent powers and the economic problems 
caused by the blockade of Germany and the sup- 
ply of the belligerents with foodstuffs and war 
implements created antagonistic currents of feel- 
ing and clashes of interests. 

But it also appeared that the war was to be 
something more than a military and naval con- 
test of power. Cleavages of opinion became 
apparent within the borders of both warring 
groups. The seeming unanimity of the German 
people at the beginning of the war was broken 
by the protests of Liebknecht and of a growing 
minority of Independent Sociahsts, clamouring 
that they had been misled in August, 1914. In 
Russia, some of the radical elements supported 
the war, the others were intensely against it, 
whilst the government's energetic action in the 
suppression of vodka and the Czar's promise of 
independence to Poland suggested fundamental 
changes in the attitude of the ruling powers. In 
South Africa there appeared to be a strong re- 
bellion, not entirely due to German propaganda, 
against mihtary participation. It seemed as 
though an increasing fraction of the Irish were 
going to avail themselves of Britain's difficulties 
to foster a revolution with or without Germany's 
support. It became known that the Slav nation- 
ahties of the Hapsburg monarchy, which seemed 
at first to have been caught by the general war- 
fever, now took an independent and almost 



72 THE REMAKING. OF A MIND 

threatening attitude. The Pope, followed by 
most of the representatives of the Catholic 
Church in the neutral states, committed himself 
to a policy of peace by negotiation that public 
opinion in the Entente countries took for an at- 
tempt to favour Germany's ambitions and save 
his beloved Austria from disruption. It became 
evident that a considerable part of the popula- 
tion of Alsace-Lorraine, far from being bullied 
into submission by the increased ruthlessness of 
the Prussian methods of administration, mani- 
fested a desire to return to France. In occu- 
pied Belgium, the ' Germans encouraged the 
movement of a minority of Flemings that aimed 
at separation from the Belgian Kingdom with 
the assistance and under the protectorate of the 
German Empire. Last but not least, there ap- 
peared to be amongst the working classes of the 
Entente countries, which had at first seemed to 
give wholehearted support to a war of national 
defence, an active and growing minority of dis- 
senters, who found strong support amongst the 
socialists of neutral countries. 

The first statements of these latters' views 
came to my notice in November, 1914, when I 
again had leisure to read. They were in maga- 
zines, newspapers and pamphlets by British, 
French, Dutch and Swiss socialists of the pacifist 
type. My first impression was painful resent- 
ment of what I thought to be a wrongful lack 



NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 73 

of appreciation of the motives of those socialists 
who, hke myself, had accepted the duty of taldng 
part in the defence of their country. But I soon 
realised that the matter deserved very serious 
attention. There was nothing in what they said, 
however unacceptable and unjust it seemed to 
be at first sight, which did not call forth an echo 
in my innermost sentiments. 

Some of those who were saying that this war 
was nothing but a conflict between two groups 
of imperialist powers for world dominion, and 
that therefore it should be internationally op- 
posed by labour, I knew to be men and women 
of high intellectual standing and unexceptional 
moral character. Up to August, 1914, I had 
been in complete sympathy with them. What, 
then, had come between us? Why, in a crisis like 
this, when our lives and the fate of our nations 
were at stake, should we stand in diametrically 
opposed camps? 

The principles on which their reasoning rested 
had always been mine, and the sentiments to 
which they appealed were the very sentiments 
that had made me act as I had acted. They 
spoke of the ideal of international brotherhood, 
of the criminal fratricide of workers, whose in- 
terests were common, in the cause of an egoistic 
class of oppressors. Was it possible that I 
should have been misled to the extent of lending 
a willing hand in such a cause? The very weight 



74 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

of the charge made a thorough self-examination 
necessary. 

There was one of their statements, and appar- 
ently a fundamental one, the truth of which I 
could not deny. This war had been brought 
about by the antagonism of interests of imperial- 
ist powers. It was not a freak of history. It was 
the outcome, the unavoidable outcome, of the 
capitalist system of production. The Marxian 
theory explained how this system led to the pro- 
duction of a larger quantity of goods than could 
be bought by the income of those who made them. 
Hence a growing tendency in all industrial coun- 
tries to secure new outlets abroad, under the pro- 
tection of their flag, for this surplus of produc- 
tion. At the same time, it became more and 
more necessary to draw raw materials and food 
supplies from foreign countries. If the latter 
were on a lower level of civiHsation, this was a 
further incentive to gain political control over 
their territories. All this meant colonialism, im- 
periahsm and competitive armaments on land 
and sea. These tendencies were common to all 
great powers and, as the surface of the world is 
limited, naturally brought them into conflict with 
each other. The chief antagonism since the be- 
ginning of this century was between the British 
Empire and Germany. Between these two, a 
tension had arisen that could only lead to war. 
England's development as an industrial power 



NINETEElSr-FOURTEEN 75 

had been earlier than Germany's, and she had 
secured most of the world before Germany's 
hunger awoke. But the last score of years had 
witnessed an enormous expansion of German in- 
dustry and trade, whilst England's position in 
the world's trade had remained by comparison 
stationary. Satiated British imperialism could 
neither give its possessions away, nor tolerate the 
formation of another world-wide power, so that 
German imperiahsm could not get what it 
wanted for its continued development without 
taking it from somebody else. This deadlock 
was bound to end with a clash of arms. 

Similarly, the internationalist argued that the 
attitude of the other powers, like Russia, France 
and Italy, was dictated by the desire of their 
capitalist class for imperiahst expansion. The 
national interests of the capitalists, they said, 
need not, however, concern the working classes. 
Labour's interest was the same the world over, 
and could only be promoted by international un- 
derstanding and brotherhood. Therefore, labour 
should not take any part in this war, for which 
the capitalist classes alone were responsible and 
for which they should be held up to universal 
opprobrium. The only way to end this war, and 
even to end war altogether, was for the Socialists 
to oppose it in every country. They should 
hinder their governments in its prosecution, and, 
by taking the political and industrial power from 



76 THE HEMAKING OF A MIND 

the then ruling classes, establish a proletarian 
regime which would make and maintain peace as 
the natural expression of the international soli- 
darity of labour. The SociaHsts who for some 
different reason were helping their governments 
to prosecute the war were either traitors to the 
cause of socialism or victims of nationalist intoxi- 
cation. They were putting the interests of the 
capitalist class of their country above the inter- 
ests and ideals of the international proletariat. 

This was, in its most consistent and clearest 
form, the theme of those socialists who called 
themselves internationalists. It found expres- 
sion in the international conferences called at 
Zimmerwald and Kienthal, in Switzerland, by 
majorities of the socialist parties of Italy and 
Switzerland, the bolshevik fraction of Russian 
socialism, and minorities from France, England, 
Germany, Austria and a few other countries. 

There was another section of European social- 
ism, comprising the majority of the German, 
Austrian and Hungarian Social - Democrats, 
more or less openly supported by some fractions 
of the Sociahst Parties in the Balkan States, 
Scandinavia (especially in Denmark), Italy and 
the United States, who took a view that differed 
both from that of the "Majority Socialists" of 
the Entente countries and that of the "interna- 
tionalists." Like the latter, they emphasised the 
imperialist character of the war, but they put 



NINETEEN-FOURTEEN 77 

the chief responsibiHty on the powers arrayed 
against the Central Emph^es, and advocated the 
support of the latter governments by the labour 
movements in their countries. I hardly need 
point out that, although I carefully listened to 
what they had to say in defence of the German 
and Austrian case, I was from the beginning so 
unfavourably disposed towards them that my 
judgment and sentiment were never disturbed. 
I found it much more troublesome, however, 
to dispose of the claims of the internationahsts. 
I confess that, for two years at least, they made 
my mind a prey to doubt. This doubt was a tor- 
ture, for it threatened to undermine the sound- 
ness of a cause for which at any moment I might 
have to give my life. I hasten to add that the 
frequent mental conflicts thus caused invariably 
resulted in my conclusion that I had been right 
in August, 1914. Even while they lasted, they 
never affected my will to do my duty as a soldier. 



IV 



THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 

"Alles erklart sich wohl," so sagt mir ein Scliiiler, "aus jenen 
Theorien, die uns vveislich der Meister gelehrt." 
Habt Ihr erst einmal das Kreuz von Holze tiichtig gezimmert, 
Passt ein lebendiger Leib freilich zur Strafe daran. 

GOETTHE. 

In spite of the pain caused me by the doubts 
arising from the criticisms of the international- 
ists, they were so beneficial to me that I am grate- 
ful now for every hour of merciless self-analysis 
they cost me. For this analysis has given me 
much more than the certitude that I "had not been 
mistaken in my view of what was at stake in 
August, 1914. To it I owe the lasting benefit 
of having put my whole method of thinking, my 
attitude towards society and the world, through 
a fiery test that, as I now reahse, has emanci- 
pated me from many things that were not a part 
of my true self. It has torn from my eyes the 
veil of doctrinarianism. It is less to the ordeal of 
shell and shot than to this hammering test of my 
conscience that I owe the remaking of my mind. 

The premises of the internationalists' thesis — 
the imperiahst origin of this war — was correct, 

78 



THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 79 

but the deduction they drew from this — the nec- 
essity of opposition to the war in every country — 
was entirely wrong. Its original fault was due, 
not to any technical mistake in the reasoning, but 
to the method itself on which that reasoning was 
based. I found this false method to be at the 
bottom of many more wrong deductions than this 
particular one. The same logical defect, for in- 
stance, Hes at the root of the theory of bolshe- 
vikism. It consists in the assumption, which 
I think illegitimate, that an actual attitude 
towards an historical fact can be derived by way 
of logical deduction from abstract predicates 
gained, not by the study of these facts them- 
selves, but by induction from other previous 
facts. 

I consider the first part of the international- 
ists' thesis as unassailable; that the war was the 
outcome of antagonisms of interest resulting 
from the need of imperialist expansion of coun- 
tries at an advanced stage of capitalist develop- 
ment. Many non-sociahsts undoubtedly agree 
with it, accepting, for instance, its particular ap- 
phcation to the economic motives of German- 
British antagonisms. The economic conditions 
in which this war originated are those of capital- 
ism in its satiated, imperiahst stage, where its 
faculty of quantitative production has outgrown 
the possible needs of the home market. In so 
far it is right to say that this war was a capitalist 



80 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

war, or an imperialist war. It is also right to 
say that socialism, that is an hypothetical social 
system based on pubhc ownership and democratic 
control of the main means of production, would 
make any such war impossible. 

Eut what is capitalism? What is imperialism? 
What is socialism? Do these words refer to ac- 
tual historic facts, to things as they are or were 
in a certain place at a certain time? By no 
means. Socialism, as a system of social organ- 
isation, is a hypothesis. And there never has 
been a moment in history when one could say: 
now capitalism is. Nothing ever is, except an 
immense diversity of fluctuating facts. Every- 
thing is on its way to become something else. 
Our mind cannot even grasp an isolated physical 
phenomenon until it has already ceased to be 
what it was when we recorded it. What we call 
capitalism, or feudalism, or primitive communism, 
are certain imaginary combinations of charac- 
teristics which a large number of economic facts 
over a long historical period have in common. 
These abstractions do not, however, coincide, at 
any actual time, with the whole of the economic 
facts even in a single spot. In every civilised 
country we now have methods of production of 
the capitalist system alongside with survivals of 
pre-capitalist stages, as well as methods which 
are abeady incompatible with the idea of capi- 
tahsm to the extent that they may be called feel- 



THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 81 

ers towards socialism. But even if we confine 
ourselves to certain phenomena in which we rec- 
ognize the characteristics of capitalism, who would 
say: this is actual capitalism? Do not we all see 
that these phenomena are no more today what 
they were yesterday, and know that they will not 
be tomorrow what they are today? Moreover, 
is not the very assumption that there are eco- 
nomic facts as distinct from say psychological 
or political facts, evidence that, for the sake of 
clear thinking, we draw in our minds imaginary 
boundaries between different classes of phenom- 
ena? Yet we know that in the real social world 
facts are so mingled that we can speak of con- 
sidering one and the same occurrence from an 
economic, a psychological, a political, or any 
other viewpoint. 

The mere fact that abstract notions like those 
of capitalism and socialism are static, whilst the 
actual realities of life are dynamic, proves that 
coincidence between the two is a mythical as- 
sumption. For if we stick to the abstraction of 
say imperialism as the system of politics that cor- 
responds to the satiated stage of capitalism, and 
without more ado apply this to facts of contem- 
porary history, we shall have to put Woodrow 
Wilson and Kaiser Wilhelm the Second under 
the same label as representatives of capitalist im- 
perialism. 

To such an absurd conclusion we come if. 



82 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

whilst dealing with facts, we indiscriminately 
use, as elements of the same logical process, facts 
and categories. Capitalism, imperialism, social- 
ism are categories. War itself — ^War with a big 
W, War in general — is a category. They are 
imaginary things, equipped with attributes which 
result from generalisation and analytical induc- 
tion. We use these categories as instruments 
necessary to scientific thinking. But we should 
keep in mind the difference between the instru- 
ment of thinking and its object. Categories and 
facts are on as different a plane as a chemical for- 
mula and the matter it stands f or> 

This is not an indictment of abstract thinking, 
but a warning against its misuse. It is thanks to 
our faculties of imagination and abstraction that 
we are able to think scientifically. Without the 
use of such categories as capitahsm, imperiahsm 
and socialism we should be helpless to find a clue 
to whatever knowledge that matters in the in- 
finite variety and complexity of events. To show 
the limits beyond which they should not be used 
is to pay a compliment to their usefulness. 

I should not think it worth while to expatiate 
on such commonplace notions if I had not been 
made to realise the tremendous harm done in 
these days, when public education and the news- 
papers give a cheap veneer of knowledge, by the 
indiscriminate propagation of catchwords which 
the masses too easily take for granted as facts. 



THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 83 

I say this with purposed reference to the sociahst 
movement. 

To people with as pronounced a faculty for 
abstract thinking as the Germans and the Jews, 
this sort of mischief with catchwords has been a 
curse. The Russian socialists, who have sat at 
the feet of both German and Jewish masters, 
have learned from them the lesson of Bolshevik- 
ism, which is nothing but an attempt to apply 
to certain actual conditions abstract doctrines 
which have been derived from conditions entirely 
different. By this I do not mean to explain the 
Bolshevik movement by the accident of a flaw 
in a logical process. To do this would be to make 
their mistake my own, and confuse the abstract 
with the concrete. Bolshevikism as a movement 
has its origin in certain actual conditions, to 
which I will refer later, but as a theory, it is a 
brilhant illustration of the absurdity of making 
actual deductions from categories. 

Marx is often held responsible for this propen- 
sity not only of the Bolsheviki, but of all the 
doctrinal socialists. It is true that the Bolshe- 
viki and most of the "Internationalist" SociaHsts 
claim to be the representatives of "pure" Marx- 
ianism. But on the other hand we find many, if 
not most of those socialists who before the war 
played the main part in the spreading of Marx- 
ian principles and their appHcation to politics, in 
the ranks of those whom their realistic view of 



84 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

the war caused to be branded by the Bolshevlki 
as "vulgar patriots" or "opportunists." I will 
mention Karl Kautsky foremost, who has 
achieved more than anybody else as a student 
and exponent of Marxianism. As one of the 
leaders of the Independent Social-Democrats in 
Germany, he has emphatically repudiated the 
Bolshevik version of internationahsm and ac- 
cepted the theory of German and Austrian re- 
sponsibihty for the war. In England the leader 
of the Marxian school of sociahsm, H. M. Hynd- 
man, has fully deserved the epithet of an ultra- 
patriotic socialist. The father of Russian Marx- 
ianism, George Plekhanoff, was one of the most 
ardent supporters of the war. In France, the old 
pioneer of Marxianism, Jules Guesde, who in 
1914 became a member of the first Ministry of 
National Defence, represented an almost ex- 
treme patriotic view, whilst his younger follow- 
ers hke Compere-Morel and those around him 
were also decidedly pro-war. In Marxian Htera- 
ture, Belgium used to be represented by Louis 
de Brouckere and myself. We both enlisted the 
same day. In neighbouring Holland, the father 
of Dutch Marxianism, Frank van der Goes, 
from the beginning expressed his agreement with 
the win-the-war sociahsts of the Entente coun- 
tries. Even in the United States, the attitude 
of most of the foreign-born members of the So- 
cialist Party should not make one forget that 



THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 85 

there are many Marxians amongst those Amer- 
ican sociaHsts who left the party because of its 
failure to support the war. 

All these men, by the way, belong to a type 
very different from the cosmopoHtan set pre- 
dominantly of East European origin, who form 
the background of international bolshevikism. 
It strikes me that none of the names I have just 
mentioned is Jewish, and that half of them de- 
note an origin from among the so-called upper 
strata of European society. I point this out 
merely as a contribution to a psychological ex- 
planation, and not by any means as an attack 
on the Jewish race. It is quite wrong to assume 
that Bolshevik doctrinarianism is practically 
confined to the Jews, or that there are no Jews 
among the win-the-war sociahsts of the Entente 
countries and their sympathisers elsewhere. Al- 
though the Jews, as a cosmopolitan element par 
excellence, form a particularly favourable re- 
cruiting ground for bolshevikism and other "in- 
ternationalist" doctrines, it would be a danger- 
ous disregard of the importance of the causes 
in which these doctrines originate to ascribe them 
to mere racial circumstances. There is many a 
Bronstein, alias Trotzki, amongst the bolshevik 
leaders in all countries, but there are also such 
aristocratic names as Wladimir Ulianoff Lenine 
and Henriette Roland Hoist-van der Schalk, be- 
sides a few as genuinely Prussian as Franz Meh- 



86 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

ring, as typically Scandinavian as Sverre Krogh 
or Hinke Bergegren, as authentically Anglo- 
Saxon as Lansbury or Debs, or as truly Latin 
as Bourderon, Loriot, Brizon and Raffin- 
Dugens. On the other hand, there is no lack of 
Jews in Russia and elsewhere, amongst those 
socialists, Marxian and otherwise, who sup- 
ported the war for Democracy or even took a 
combatant part in it. Yet when all this is said, 
it remains a fact that, as a rule, the attitude of 
mind of the Marxian Socialists has been largely 
influenced by the extent to which they were as- 
sociated with the national civilisation of their 
countries. Hence the different frame of mind 
of those whose forefathers have been for many 
generations linked with this life and those who 
have never been allowed to strike their roots 
anywhere. 

Marxianism is not a system, but a method. 
The results obtained by this method depend on 
who uses it, how he uses it, and what he uses it 
for. So much is certain, that Marx himself has 
used it in a very different way from those who 
now lay claim to the monopoly of his inspiration. 
If he were still alive he probably would not be a 
Marxian. 

It is true that the strength of Marx, like that 
of Spinoza and most Jewish thinkers, lay in his 
power of abstract thinking. The claim of his 
faithful famulus Engels that he made socialism 



THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 87 

scientific is not to be taken in the sense that he 
equipped the sociahst movement with a perfect 
system of final knowledge about the laws of so- 
cial development. It merely means that he had 
been the first to base his view of socialism not on 
Utopian desires, but on a study, by scientific 
methods, of the laws of economic and historic 
development, the unavoidable outcome of which 
he thought socialism would be. He was com- 
pelled to use inductive analysis in order to dis- 
cover the laws of capitahst economy. About the 
middle of the nineteenth century, long before 
capitahsm had reached the acme of its develop- 
ment, he had to show the historic necessity of so- 
cialism and to 'formulate its programme. The 
concrete knowledge of contemporary facts ar- 
rived at by Marx, important though it was, is 
anything but final. Who would go back to 
works written half a century ago for an accurate 
description of a system of production which has 
made more progress since these works were writ- 
ten than it had before? Surely there are pages 
in Marx's writings where his prophetic genius 
still strikes one with amazement; but prophecy, 
though it may be evidence of the extraordinary 
power of a scientific method, is not in itself a 
method. Even such Marxian theories as that of 
value, which depend on the knowledge of actual 
facts, no longer appear to us, in the light of 
what has since happened, as a final explanation; 



88 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

they are now merely an important and brilliant 
chapter in the history of economic doctrine. 
They were, as all similar theories before and 
after, no more than a hypothesis of which the 
relative soundness is to be measured by its rela- 
tion to the facts known at the time when it was 
conceived. 

A much more lasting value attached to the 
method of investigation used by Marx. His 
interpretation of the struggle of economic class 
interests as the dynamic power of social progress 
has revolutionised methods of historical investi- 
gation. His explanation of conflicting class in- 
terests by the system of production prevailing at 
a given period, and of this system of production 
as the result of a given state of development of 
the means of production has proved a particu- 
larly valuable clue to historical research. The 
value of this clue is so far from being exhausted, 
that there are whole fields of investigation — e. g., 
the history of science, the progress of strategy, 
and the development of nationahty — ^where the 
first attempts at utilisation of the Marxian 
method have not been undertaken until quite re- 
cently. On the other hand, investigations like 
those set on foot of late years by Rudolf Hilf erd- 
ing on financial capitalism, by Karl Kautsky on 
the theory of population, and by Rosa Luxem- 
burg on the economic background of imperialism 
have shown that even on Marx's own field of re- 



THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 89 

search, his method could still yield interesting 
results. 

But is it as needful of amendment as, for in- 
stance, was that of Darwin in the realm of natu- 
ral science. A method of investigation is but an 
instrument, and when the instrument ceases to be 
perfectible, it is no longer of any use. The 
Marxian method no more leads to absolute truth 
in matters where truth is but a relative and sub- 
jective quantity than any other process for the 
interpretation of history ever has done or could 
do. But, in my opinion, it is still far from the 
stage where it will cease to be the most useful 
of all instruments at our disposal. Whether the 
label be Marxian or not, I do not think that the 
European labour movement will readily give up 
such an intellectual weapon. The appeal of the 
labour movement to social idealism is all the 
stronger since it makes even the every-day strug- 
gle for petty improvements appear as part and 
parcel of a great historic movement for the re- 
form of society. It finds supreme self-reliance 
in the knowledge that its aims, its progress and 
its ultimate victory are as necessary a conse- 
quence of the contemporary phase of capitalism 
as were, in earlier phases, the downfall of feudal- 
ism, the decay of the guild system, the establish- 
ment of political democracy, and the abolition of 
slavery. 

If it be true then that Marxianism is but a 



90 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

method of investigation, there is no more reason 
to make Marx responsible for bolshevikism than 
there would be to blame the discoverer of oil for 
the crime of an incendiary. His fate is that of 
all scientific innovators and system-builders. The 
greater their genius, the worse the harm done by 
the class of people whom Schiller had in mind 
when he said with reference to Kant: "When 
kings build, there's a job for the carters."* 

Marx, like Kant, and so many others, is a 
victim of the law of the least effort. It is so 
very much easier to recite the formula in which 
he concentrated what was most liable to amend- 
ment in the results of his research, than to grasp 
what makes the lasting value of his work — the 
living spirit of his method. Characteristically 
enough, this method is never expHcitly formu- 
lated in his own works, so that it has to be dis- 
tilled from the study of his writings and of his 
poHtical activity. Whoever undertakes this 
study will be struck by the numerous instances 
of Marx's almost prophetic sneering at those 
who read the letter but are blind to the spirit. 
This spirit was not that of dogmatism. It was 
not syllogistic, but dialectic. His analysis of the 
tendencies of capitalist development will be 
found magnificently alive with the dynamic spirit 
that checks its own findings by contradiction and 

* Wenn die Konige bau'n, haben die Karrner zu tun ( Kant und 
seine Ausleger). 



THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 91 

sees perpetually moving facts where others but 
stare at milestones. It is as pregnant with the 
sense of dialectic motion and evolution as is the 
involved and progressing reality of the capitahst 
society he surveyed. 

Most of this I had already realised before the 
war. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty- 
two I had myself sinned against the spirit by idol- 
ising the letter. I had just outgrown then the 
Utopian and purely sentimental stage of social- 
ism, and was carried away by the enthusiasm of 
my discovery of Marxianism as a system that 
promised to equip my desires with the victorious 
infalHbihty of science. My dogmaticism, how- 
ever, did not long withstand the dissolvent influ- 
ence of a more intimate contact with real life as 
time went by. Especially during the three years 
that preceded the war, which were almost entirely 
devoted to practical social work in Belgium, I 
had come to a view of things in which a much 
more modest part was played by abstract the- 
ories. My connection with the trade union move- 
ment had had a particularly strong influence in 
that direction. But not until the war, when I 
found myself at grasps with the disastrous con- 
sequences of a doctrinarianism which I had my- 
self contributed to spread, did I fully reahse the 
necessity of a thorough self-examination. The 
first definite conclusion I then came to was that, 
just as philosophy begins with the theory of 



92 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

knowledge, so the value of any theory of social 
progress depends on the recognition of the limi- 
tation of its field. 

We Marxian Socialists had succumbed to the 
fascination of a theory that not only gave us an 
unsurpassed instrument for the discovery of some 
of the main causes of historic progress, but ap- 
pealed at the same time to reason by its fierce 
analytic power and to constructive imagination 
by its bold foreknowledge of a future conceived 
as the resultant of unalterable laws. So far so 
good. But our propaganda had carried a super- 
ficial knowledge of the formulae that synthesised 
these theories into the minds of people who ig- 
nored the method through which they had been 
arrived at, and who therefore lacked both the 
knowledge of the natural limits of this method 
and the capacity to use it as a means perpetually 
to revise its own results. So one day we found 
ourselves confronted by people who used the 
very formulae which they had learned from us 
in a way totally different from the one we had 
intended. Arguing helped no longer : When we 
talked facts they answered by dogmas. 

It was of course an easy excuse to say that such 
is the penalty of all vulgarisation of knowledge. 
I for one have not tried to shield myself in this 
fashion, but say: mea culpa, 

I had to lay the axe at the root of the evil, and 
start from the principle that theoretical views 



THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 93 

about the general causes of contemporary wars 
should not cause one to replace facts by cate- 
gories. These views should merely help to a 
better understanding of the facts and to the 
judgment of each case on its own merits. Thus 
the solution of the particular problem of labour's 
attitude towards this war became comparatively 
simple. 

My starting point was the same as that of the 
"internationalist" socialists. This war was due 
to general causes, internationally inherent to the 
present social system, and therefore the attitude 
of socialists should be inspired by a universal 
view of the case. 

I further agreed with the internationalist that 
in view of the menace to civilisation of a war 
originating in the opposition of interests between 
minorities of the involved nations, it was the duty 
of labour to try to prevent its outbreak by all 
means. This had indeed been done, as long as 
there was the slightest chance of averting the con- 
flict, in what proved to be the only possible way: 
by bringing pressure to bear in each country 
upon its government to keep it from aggression 
and to make it help the other governments in 
finding an amicable solution. These attempts 
had been unsuccessful, because the power behind 
them was insufficient, at least in some of the 
countries involved. The war had become a fact 
in spite of our efforts. 



94 THE REMAKIlSrG OF A MIND 

I ceased to be in agreement with the interna- 
tionahsts however when they said that this fact 
need not alter our pohcy and that we should con- 
tinue, irrespective of the strategical or territorial 
situation, to oppose the conduct of the war in 
every country. 

This pohcy was based on the twofold assump- 
tion that the strategical and territorial situation 
did not affect the interests of labour, and that 
all the governments engaged in the war were 
equally responsible and animated by the same 
detestable motives. 

I considered that both these assumptions were 
false. 

First of all, I thought that labour, having been 
unable to prevent hostilities, had nevertheless, to 
say the least of it, the same interest as the other 
classes of a given country in opposing the inva- 
sion of its territory and the replacement of its 
self -chosen government by the rule of a foreign 
domination. This, by the way, was the logical 
conclusion from one of the most fundamental 
principles of both the first and the second Inter- 
nationale: the right of each nation to dispose of 
itself. All the international Socialist and Labour 
Congresses had considered it a matter of course 
that, should a country be attacked by a foreign 
power threatening to take away this right of self- 
disposal, the working classes should participate 
in the duty of national defence. 



THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 95 

So the decisive question came down to this: 
was it possible, in this war, to draw a distinction 
between the aggressors and the victims of ag- 
gression? 

The "internationahsts" denied this possibility, 
on the ground that imperialism was universally 
responsible. They said that the only aggressor 
was international capitalism and the only victim 
the international proletariat; so that there was 
but one alternative to the war — socialism — and 
but one policy — international social revolution. 

Thus were categories substituted for facts. 
For the conception of this war was as an aggres- 
sion of capitalism against labour was an abstrac- 
tion based on categories, not only different from, 
but opposed to the facts of the case. 

These facts were mihtary and naval opera- 
tions as a test of power between states. Far 
from grouping international capitalism against 
the international proletariat, the war involved 
at least a temporary rupture of the universal 
solidarity of interests of these two groups. They 
were no doubt extremely deplorable facts, but 
they were very tangible all the same, much more 
tangible than any armchair-formula to the mil- 
lions who fought in the firing line, lived in in- 
vaded territory, or suffered any of the thousand- 
fold consequences by which the reality of this 
titanic struggle was brought home to the inhabi- 
tants of Europe. 



96 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

Yet there were but two alternatives: either to 
shut one's eyes to the facts and withdraw into the 
reahn of these formulae, or to accept their real- 
ity, face their consequences, and draw their log- 
ical conclusions. 

For those who, like myself, took the latter 
course, these conclusions were clear enough. 
They were: 

First, that, although imperialist capitalism had 
created the conditions which made a world's war 
possible, the main, immediate and actual respon- 
sibility for this particular war rested on Ger- 
many and Austria-Hungary, who had shown 
their aggressive designs by the latter's attack on 
Serbia and the former's on Belgium and France. 

Second, that the autocratic form of govern- 
ment and the aggressive militarism of the Cen- 
tral Empires, together with the lack of disposi- 
tion on the part of their peoples effectively to 
oppose this system, made the victory of these 
powers incompatible with the progress of any 
movement which requires pohtical freedom, de- 
mocracy and peace for its normal development. 

The dilemma — either to accept this conclusion 
of the facts, or not to consider the facts at all — 
was obvious, as was shown by those socialists who 
sided with the Central Powers, like the majority 
of Social-Democrats of Germany and Austria 
themselves. Although they refused to accept the 
internationalists' postulate of opposition to war 



THE SPELL OF DOGMATISM 97 

in every country, they had to take refuge, to 
cloak the responsibility of their governments, in 
the "internationalist" formula of the universal 
responsibility of capitahsm, and persistently re- 
fused to consider the case on its actual merits. 
This is why, even after the armistice, the ma- 
jority Social-Democrats continued to refuse any 
discussion of the responsibility for the war. Hy- 
pocrisy, said La Rochefoucauld, is the homage 
vice pays to virtue. The attitude of the German 
Social-Democrats shows that similarly intellect- 
ual duphcity is the homage falsehood pays to 
truth. 

Once I had thus emancipated my mind from 
the spell of dogmaticism, and decided to consider 
facts irrespective of previous general conclu- 
sions, I had gained control of the weapon that 
was ultimately to solve my doubts and give my 
conscience peace. I was armed for the struggle, 
but the struggle itself had yet to begin. 



GERMAN PATRIOTISM 

. . . the land of the folk-songs, 
Where the gifts hang on the tree, 
Where the girls give ale in the morning 
And the tears come easily. 

G. K. Chesterton, TJie Ballad of the White Horse, III. 

The first problem that arose was the revision 
of my attitude towards Germany in general and 
German social-democracy in particular. 

In spite of my hatred of German militarism 
and my disgust with German submissiveness, in 
spite also of the fact that I was constantly in 
danger of being blown to bits by a German sh^U 
or "punctured" by a German bullet, I was still 
a German patriot. I am one to this day. By this 
I mean that irrespective of Germany's attitude 
in this war, the word Germany still suggests to 
me other things than ''Feldgrau'' It is associ- 
ated with many lovable recollections of the coun- 
try and of the people ; with gratitude for the en- 
richment that my spiritual life owes to German 
art, literature and science; with appreciation for 
the part Germany has played for centuries in the 
progress of European civilisation; with the ar- 

98 



GERMAN PATRIOTISM 99 

dent desire to see the German nation, freed from 
despotism, recover in a league of self-governing 
peoples a position corresponding to its best qual- 
ities. I have always felt that this war for the 
self-government of nations would not be worth 
winning unless it gave the German people the 
full rights to dispose, not only of its territory, 
but of its own fate, and thus enable it to fulfil 
a better destiny than that of being the tool of a 
dynasty. It is in this sense I have never ceased 
to be a German patriot. While fighting against 
the German army, I was fighting for the Ger- 
man nation. Or, to put it more accurately, in 
fighting against the German nation of today I 
was fighting for the German nation of tomorrow. 

But what a tragic contrast between the splen- 
dour of this aim, and the barbarity of the fratri- 
cidal means by which it was to be reached ! 

I never felt this more distinctly than one night 
in June, 1915, after an evening spent in a village 
a few miles in the rear of the front with a friend 
who at that time was in a neighbouring sector 
and, like myself, had been a student at German 
universities. I can vouch for it that he was as de- 
termined a fighter of the "boche," whose bullet 
marks he bore on his body, as I was myself. But 
the very intensity and concentration of war- 
like purpose that had been required for several 
months made both of us aspire to some relaxation 
from the thought of war. This we found for a 



100 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

few hours in the house of the good French people 
who gave us hospitahty that evenmg, with a suffi- 
cient amount of comfort almost to create the illu- 
sion of being at home. As we two sat alone after 
supper with a pipe and a glass of wine, we began 
to talk of Germany — a Germany very different 
from the grim reality that faced us only half a 
dozen miles away — ^the Germany we had both 
known and learned to love in her universities, her 
libraries, her opera-houses and concert-halls. We 
sang some of the old folk-songs we had sung as 
students. Songs of true love and the yearning of 
sentimental souls; songs full of the fragrance of 
woods and moorland, breathing love of nature 
and Wanderlust; songs of the generation of 1813 
and the Burschenschaften, fired with the spirit of 
sacrifice for the freedom of a great nation in the 
making; songs of eternal friendship and loyalty, 
songs inspired by the naive legends of a fantastic 
''MdrchenweW ; songs sparkhng with the gentle 
mirth of people who, through the glimmering of 
a glassful of Rhine wine, see a rosy world full 
of good things, good friends and good feelings. 
And we asked oiu'selves : can the soul of a people 
belie itself hke that? Do these songs not speak 
of Germany as it really was and will be again? 
Is not the revelling in crude materialism and 
utter immorahty, which followed its over-rapid 
rise to industrial power ; the bestiality of its mili- 
tarism; the brutal perfidy of its present attempt 



GERMAN PATRIOTISM 101 

to bully the world into submission — is not all this 
a bad dream, or an illusion of our hatred? 

Thus we debated, forgetting for one evening 
the pain of reality, as we walked back under the 
starlit sky of the mild summer night, full of the 
fragrance of hay and birch leaves, whilst the loud 
croaking of the frogs in the near brooks and 
ditches muffled the faint ratthng of machine-guns 
and the low grumbling of cannon in the distance. 
Every now and then ahead of us a Verey light 
went up from the sky-line, leaving a sinuous trail 
of sparks, and looking for a moment like a star 
among the stars, then bursting gorgeously into 
a cascade of greenish light that seemed to fill the 
horizon with fireworks. The crescendo of our 
feelings had made us silently happy. No words 
were needed to tell each other that we were both 
dreaming of the happiness of a reconciliated 
mankind, and that those lights in the sl^ were 
but fireworks at the festival of our imagination. 
When finally one of us took up the motif of the 
last phrase of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, it 
echoed in both our minds as the fittest expression 
of our exaltation. As we hummed the heroic 
passage of "freudig, wie ein Held zum siegen," 
we did not think of the real khaki or grey-clad 
figures, at that very moment crouching, three 
miles ahead, in fear of death, under the outbursts 
of light thrown by those fireworks over the shell- 
torn landscape of sandbags and wire entangle- 



102 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

merits. Our "Held" was some Prometheus, 
fighting humanity's eternal fight against hostile 
nature, conquering darkness with light. ... As 
we came to the climax of the Hymn to Joy, it 
seemed indeed as though our minds embraced a 
world reconciled in the universal joy of freedom 
and as though everything around us were but a 
passage in the great symphony that was to cul- 
minate in "Seid umschlungen, Milhonen! diesen 
Kuss der ganzen Welt!" 

A shell screamed and threw up a few sods and 
some mud from a ditch near by. My friend's 
Satanic laughter greeted this awakening from our 
dream. A few minutes later, as we neared the 
cross-roads where our ways parted, a bayonet 
glittered in the night and a hoarse voice shouted : 
"Halt! who goes there?" I answered "Friends." 
But we were no longer thinking of the world- 
friendship hymned by Schiller and Beethoven. 
Our friends were all on this side of No Man's 
Land. Guns and rifles were the instruments with 
which we were then playing our part in the 
world's symphony. 

Yet could one cease to remember, and, above 
all, could one cease to hope? I tried hard to do 
so, for I feared — though this never happened — 
that at some decisive moment the strength of my 
will to fight, which means to kill as many of the 
enemy as you can, might be impaired. But I 
tried in vain. And, as I now look back upon 



GERMAN PATRIOTISM 103 

those years at the front, I am glad that it was 
so, and that I have been able to kill Germans 
without ceasing to love Germany. A few hours 
of painful arguing with myself, a few cruel awak- 
enings from the world of dreams, and even the 
risk of being misunderstood by narrow-minded 
comrades who might have guessed right about 
my innermost feelings (though I never talked 
more about these things than could be helped) — 
this was not too heavy a price to pay for the 
blessing of not having surrendered my soul to 
blind hatred. After all, what I loved Germany 
for made me hate and fight the Germans all the 
better. 

There are two bad mistakes that can be made 
in judging a nation. The first is to consider it 
as a homogeneous entity, irrespective of any dif- 
ferences between classes or individuals. The 
second mistake, which is worse still, is to treat 
national characteristics as always remaining the 
same. Both errors unfortunately are extremely 
common. They are both encouraged by the 
widespread behef in a theory that explains na- 
tionahty by racial characteristics. This offers 
the undoubted advantage of presenting a very 
simple explanation of very complicated things, 
besides opening a wide field to the amusing play 
of conjecture, of personal sympathies and ani- 
mosities. Nevertheless, this explanation is as 
false as it is easy. 



104 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

Let the dogmatists of race help us to explain 
the civihsation of African tribes or the migra- 
tions of Red Indians. Very well. Let them ex- 
periment in America with immigrants from East- 
ern Europe. Very well again. But for the sake 
of human science let them refrain from any at- 
tempts to explain national psychology in West- 
ern Europe by the colour of people's hair or the 
dimensions of their skull; for there they must 
either confine themselves to the domain of com- 
monplace or else jump with both feet into such 
hopeless conjecture that no benefit can result 
from it except amusement at the colossal dimen- 
sions of their fanatic blunders. I wish some- 
body would explain Belgian or French national- 
ity to me with the help of the race theory, and tell 
me something more than that the present racial 
characteristics are composed of those of all the 
races, nations, and tribes — Celts, Gauls, Romans, 
Goths, Franks, Saxons, Swabians, Frisians, 
Basques, Moors, Arabs, Huns, Britons, Nor- 
mans, Spaniards, Jews, and whatever else — that 
have kept wandering about, fighting or mixing 
uninterruptedly for a score of centuries. Are not 
the racial characteristics of the Germans very 
much the same as those of the Anglo-Saxons who 
descend from the same stock? And yet, what an 
abyss between German and Anglo-Saxon psy- 
chology! There is probably much more in com- 
mon, on the other hand, between the habits and 



GERMAN PATRIOTISM 105 

traditions of Herr Fritz Schulze, greengrocer of 
Berlin on the Spree (who is a flaxen-haired doli- 
chocephalic descendant of the Saxon forest- 
dwellers of Brandenburg) and Monsieur Marius 
Latignasse, of Marseilles on the Rhone (a dark- 
haired brachyacephalic keeper, whose pedigree 
goes back to Phoenician and Hellenic colonisa- 
tion) than there is between either of the two 
aforesaid gentlemen and Mr. John Smith, clerk 
of London on the Thames. Yet Mr. John 
Smith's fair hair, pink complexion and long skull 
make him resemble Herr Schulze like a brother; 
and the Smiths may have lived in the hut next to 
Schulze' s in that same old Brandenburg forest 
two thousand years ago, or, for that matter, in 
the same cavern another score of centuries earlier 
still. I am of as true a Flemish stock as any 
(there was a de Man amongst the Flemish free- 
men who fell in the Battle of Cassel in 1328), 
yet within the last seven generations, in direct 
descent alone, there has been Spanish, French 
and Dutch blood mixed with what may have re- 
mained of the original fluid, of which nobody 
knows or cares whether it was Prankish, Saxon, 
Frisian, Celtic, or of any other tribe of pale- 
faced men that walked upright on a pair of legs. 
In the cockpit of races which Western Europe 
has been for twenty centuries at the very least, it 
is as ridiculous to base a nation's claim to a soul of 
its own on race as it is for an aristocrat to think 



106 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

that his blood is of a different colour from that of 
the plehs, forgetting how easy it is to calculate 
that within the last thousand years, which more or 
less correspond to the age of feudal aristoc- 
racy, his blood may have been made, at the rea- 
sonable rate of three generations per century, out 
of that of 2,147,483,646 men and women. The 
corresponding number of sixty generations, 
which is less than is required to modify the physi- 
cal characteristics of a race, consists of nineteen 
figures. One must, of course, make a very liberal 
allowance for double entries on account of in- 
breeding ; but even so, there remains quite a plehs 
by itself to say grandpa and grandma to. 

The war itself has been the most conclusive 
of all refutations of the race theory. We have 
seen the world clearly divided into two camps 
according to their views as to the fundamental 
principles of government: for and against de- 
mocracy, the self-disposal of nationalities, the 
recognition of international right above the con- 
venience of single states. Here, then, if ever, 
there was a test of national psychology, both for 
the belligerents and the neutral peoples. Yet 
who could discern the influence of race in this 
cleavage of the world? Teutons of the British 
Empire and America, as well as the "low Ger- 
man" Flemings and Boers, were arrayed against 
the Teutons of Germany. The Scandinavians of 
Norway favoured the Entente; a large part of 



GERMAN PATRIOTISM 107 

the Scandinavians of Sweden, Denmark and Fin- 
land sided with the Central Powers. The major- 
ity of the Saxons and Frisians of Holland 
sympathised enthusiastically with the cause of 
France; one-third of the names of the Prus- 
sian Junkers and one-half of those of the Aus- 
trian officers were Slav; and Slav Bulgaria made 
war on Slav Serbia and Slav Russia. Half of 
Latin Spain sympathised with Germany. Arabs 
attacked the Turks in Hedjaz and Syria; but 
other Arabs helped the Turks in Gallipoh. Scot- 
tish Celts died for the Empire at Ypres; whilst 
Irish Celts died for Sinn Fein in Dublin; Jews 
foiTight under every standard, and I mention but 
a small part of the evidence. 

In order not to complicate the problem I will 
not refer here to the cosmopolitan origin of the 
population of the United States of America, for 
there we have to consider nationahty as well as 
race — two notions which should be kept strictly 
apart. Yet I might point out that if even the ties 
that bound immigrated Americans to European 
nationalities have not been able to disrupt the 
moral unity of the American people, how much 
more powerless must racial characteristics have 
been. 

The theory of those who argue that the Ger- 
mans do not belong to civilised mankind, or are 
constitutionally vicious, faithless and cruel, be- 
cause of their racial characteristics, is as childish 



108 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

as Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain's claim 
that the same racial characteristics are those of 
a Herrenvolk destined by God — or rather, Gottj 
that old crony of William Hohenzollern — to sub- 
jugate the world and lead it to greater triumphs. 
Both theories may be consigned to the Museum 
for Ethnography, along with the stone or bone 
utensils of our forefathers, the forest-dwellers. 

National characteristics, namely those that re- 
sult from a historic community of language, in- 
stitutions and culture, synthesised by a common 
political organisation, are quite a different mat- 
ter. Here there is room for sane argument. But 
it must be observed that once the element of race, 
which for all practical historical purposes is a 
constant value, is ehminated, all the other com- 
ponents that constitute a nation's psychology are 
at the same time heterogeneous in space and 
variable in time. 

They are heterogeneous, even at a given time, 
because the same causes, when related to the 
spirit of a nation's institutions and traditions, 
may, and very often do, result in different, and, 
even, in opposed characteristics, according to the 
features of groups, or individual psychology, 
with which they combine. Any attempt at scien- 
tific collective psychology is necessarily based on 
the hypothesis that the psyche of a man living in 
society results from a combination of influences 
that vary according to the different kinds of rela- 



GERMAN PATRIOTISM 109 

tions existing between this man and other men. 
To discern the component parts of this combina- 
tion, individual men must be studied as belong- 
ing simultaneously to different circles or groups, 
such as originate in the state, provincial or local 
community, social class, profession, religious 
creed, political affihation, family traditions, kind 
of public education received and of habitual 
reading, and so forth. Every one of these 
groups, which are either a community of interests 
or of views, or else of both, represents an ele- 
ment in the total formula of what a man's psy- 
chology owes to his associations with other men. 
The relative strength of these influences is vari- 
able. Class or professional allegiance, for in- 
stance, may have a more powerful psychological 
effect upon nationality itself. Thus, kindred in- 
terests and mode of life may give a working man 
in Budapest a greater psychological resemblance 
to another working man in Buenos Ayres than to 
a Hungarian university professor or landowner 
in his own city. The same may be true, and very 
often is true, of this Hungarian university pro- 
fessor and his Anglo-Saxon colleague in Seattle. 
Their psychological similarity may be much more 
manifest, even in their physiognomy and gestures 
(say, in the way they put their spectacles on their 
noses), than is any resemblance between our 
Budapest professor and his fellow-citizen of a dif- 
ferent occupation. There is something more than 



110 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

a joke in this. The obvious likeness in habits 
and psychological peculiarities between profes- 
sional categories all the world over with such 
pronounced characteristics as those of teachers, 
cab drivers, costermongers, innkeepers and many 
others, are but an illustration of the fact that 
modern conditions of life have created between 
men stronger ties of common interests and views 
than those of national allegiance. 

The jocular character of these examples must 
not obscure the much more serious aspect of the 
universahty of aspirations which the spread of in- 
dustrialism has created by approximately stand- 
ardising the conditions that determine the psy- 
chology of the working classes throughout the 
world. And who would deny that there is more 
similarity in the outlook on life of, say, a French 
imperiahst steel-magnate and a German imperi- 
ahst steel-magnate, than there is between either 
of the two and the average peasant or working 
man of his own country? Independently, how- 
ever, of the relative value of its component ele- 
ments, the formula of group psychology resem- 
bles that of a chemical combination in the way 
a change in one or several of its elements may 
totally modify the actual result. So the char- 
acteristics of nationality may manifest them- 
selves very differently in various social groups. 

Let us choose an example in Germany. The 
clumsy thoroughness of German thinking is uni- 



GERMAN PATRIOTISM 111 

versally accepted as a feature of the nation. 
Now let us see how it can work differently as an 
element in the formula of class or group psy- 
chology. The Junker class do not hold intel- 
lectual functions in very high esteem, because 
they hardly need them professionally beyond the 
moderate amount that is required to judge the 
race or the age of horses or to discern whether 
some soldier's peccadillo entails eight days 
*'C. B." or one day "in the black hole." Never- 
theless, they have certain political interests to 
defend, which requires action in the press, and in 
parliamentary and administrative bodies. There, 
then, the native heaviness of this intellectual 
mechanism will reveal itself as ruthless dogma- 
tism in the defence of material interests. 

Now let us take a different social group, like 
the extreme radical element of the proletariat, 
as represented by the Spartacus movement. Its 
leaders were intellectuals like Karl Liebnecht, 
Franz Mehring, Rosa Luxemburg, inspired by 
an idealistic view of the historic task of their 
movement, and by disgust with the narrow- 
minded materialism of the party in power. Com- 
bined with the characteristics of this group, the 
same thoroughness in thinking leads to a form 
of abstract idealism which, whatever else its 
faults may be, is an impulse of the highest moral 
order, and forms a striking contrast to the results 
of the intellectual characteristics of the Junkers. 



112 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

A similar contrast arises from the comparison 
of Junker mentality with the lofty but unpracti- 
cal idealism which, in the case of the old genera- 
tion of long-haired, spectacled and absent-mind- 
ed professors, living with their feet in slippers 
and their thoughts in the clouds, resulted from 
the combination of this same Teutonic thorough- 
ness with professional pursuits entirely different 
from those of the Junkers. The best example 
of their state of mind, which is still more com- 
mon than is generally beheved, is a story related, 
if I remember rightly, by a Dutch journalist. I 
think it is good enough to make the digression 
pardonable. 

An international prize is offered for the best 
monograph on The Camel. A German, an Eng- 
lishman and a Frenchman, all three University 
professors, decide to compete. The Frenchman 
goes to Paris, takes an apartment in the Quai^tier 
Latin for a few weeks and goes for a stroll 
every afternoon in the Jardin des Plantes — the 
local Zoo. Then he writes a book, full of witty 
i^emarks and ho7is mots, about the camel with 
whom he has thus made friends. The English- 
man packs his trunk; goes to the desert; spends 
a year there ; then comes back with a short, mat- 
ter-of-fact, but excellently worded description of 
the few things really worth knowing about a 
camel. The German hires a room close to the 
Konigliche Bibliothek in Berlin, fills it with to- 



GERMAN PATRIOTISM 113 

bacco smoke for three years, and then publishes 
six volumes on "The Camel {Camelus Bactri- 
anus) from an anatomic, biologic, zoologic, eco- 
nomic, etc., viewpoint, in its relation to, etc., with 
special reference to, etc., with several appendices, 
charts, diagrams, etc." The fifth volume is de- 
voted to the philosophy of the camel as an ab- 
stract entity, and the sixth is a complete bibhog- 
raphy of the subject, embracing everything that 
has been written or printed about camels since 
the earliest stages of Egyptian civiHsation. 

It has often been said during the war, to take 
another example, that Germans have no sense of 
humour. Now, it can hardly be disputed that 
the average German lacks the quickness of per- 
ception and thought that is a condition to what 
Anglo-Saxons, for instance, consider as a hu- 
morous disposition. The historical explanation 
lies near at hand. Germany's development as 
an industrial and commercial nation is so recent 
that it has hardly had J:ime to influence the popu- 
lar frame of mind. For centuries, and until a 
very short time ago, the Germans have been a 
nation of peasants and artisans. The peasants 
were still practically serfs a century and a quar- 
ter ago, and the artisans lived in a sphere almost 
as narrow and in an environment as unchanging 
as those of the peasants themselves. People who 
lead this sort of life tend to turn the faculties 
of their imagination towards music, philosophic 



114 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

meditation, and the mythology of home and 
nature. Imagination does not then leave the 
domain of a man's own mind and of the small 
world that limits his outlook. This is probably 
one of the causes of the Teutonic thoroughness. 
It certainly accounts for the slowness of the Ger- 
man mind. Slow working creates slow thinking, 
and slow thinking cramps the sense of humour. 

To develop their sense of humour, the Anglo- 
Saxons have required the broad expanse of the 
world they made their own, which they kept wid- 
ening, and in which they moved about as a na- 
tion of manufacturers, seafarers, traders and co- 
lonial pioneers. It was a world full of contrasts 
and surprises, full also of those adventures that 
stir the faculty of the human mind to reach 
against adversity by fun. It is no hazard that 
the heroic period of English literary humour 
synchronizes with the heroic period of early Eng- 
lish industrialism and imperialism, the time of 
Queen EHzabeth and Shakespeare. Nor is it 
mere coincidence that the west of America, with 
the intensity and speed of its pioneer life, full of 
changing and unexpected conditions and impres- 
sions, has produced what to my European mind 
seems to be the most concentrated and typical 
form of American humour. 

Moreover, until a very few years ago — too 
short a time to create any new characteristics of 
mind — there was practically no sporting life in 



GERMAN PATRIOTISM 115 

Germany. Thus it lacked an element that seems 
to become more and more a source of popular 
humour, as is born out by the growing predomi- 
nance of sporting expressions and images in 
current Anglo-Saxon humorous literature. Yet 
it would be false to conclude that there is no such 
thing as genuine humour in the Teutonic soul. 
On the contrary, the same contemplative life in 
the narrow circles of peasantry and petty crafts- 
manship — that resulted in slow, deep thinking, 
turned the imagination towards the sentimental 
life, and animated their environment with mythic 
creations — has developed a strong sense for any- 
thing humorous that happens within these cir- 
cles. Therefore, German humour is essentially 
a humour of peasants and provincials — ^just as 
was formerly English and French humour in 
a corresponding stage of historic development. 
Germany has never really outgrown that semi- 
mediaeval stage. Such names, however, as Ja- 
kob Kortum, Wilhelm Busch, and Fritz Renter, 
which stand for different aspects of German hu- 
mour at its best, suggest a quality of mirth as 
genuine and typical as the French, English, or 
American variety. It does not lack depth and 
shrewdness, although it has neither the quick mo- 
tion and directness of the Anglo-Saxon wit, nor 
the penetrating intellectual finesse of French 
esprit. 

Yet the mistaken assumption that there is 



116 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

no sense of humour in Germany is quite ex- 
cusable, for the classes of Germans with whom 
foreigners were most likely to come in contact 
are just those that live outside of the provincial 
circles where German humour has its roots. They 
are the city dwellers and more particularly the 
commercial classes, whose conditions of hfe have 
comparatively recently separated them from the 
sources of sound popular humour, without yet 
creating the new world of images, tastes and in- 
tellectual traditions which could inspire up-to- 
date drollery. About all that the outside world 
saw of Germany were these classes, whose aver- 
age mentahty was indeed such as to justify the 
impression that every German was a bullying, 
bombastic, blunt-witted, tactless and unsports- 
manhke person, with no sense of humour beyond 
his glee in brutality, cruelty or obscenity. There 
is a sense of humour in German home-life in as 
far as it resembles that of the peasant or artisan 
ancestry ; but none in German politics, or in Ger- 
man warfare. If you talk to an officer in the 
Prussian Guard, you will find that the only sort 
of humour about him is involuntary; but if you 
have a friendly chat with a Swabian peasant or 
with an old shoemaker in some Bavarian town- 
ship, you will many a time discover a turn of 
mind, both poetic and humorous, that will make 
you grasp the meaning of old German "Gemlit- 
iichkeit." 



VI 



GERMAN MILITARISM 

Les opinions qui different de I'esprit dominant, quel qu'il soit 
scandalisent toujoura le vulgaire: I'etude et I'examen peuvent 
seuls donner cette liberalite du jugement, sans laquelle il est 
impossible d'acqu^rir des lumieres nouvelles, ou de conserver 
meme celles qu'on a ; car on se soumet a de certaines idees revues, 
non comme a des verites, mais comme au pouvoir; et c'est ainsi 
que la raison humaine s'habitue k la servitude. 

Madame de Stael, de VAllemagne. 

The utter impossibility of a theory based on 
the stability of national characteristics becomes 
increasingly obvious as soon as we view national- 
ity as an element that varies with time. A very 
few examples will suffice to show how these char- 
acteristics change together with the historic con- 
ditions that create them. 

The history of my own country offers a par- 
ticularly striking illustration. Walloons and 
Flemings present the marked contrast of two 
nationalities with the opposite mental character- 
istics of industrial and agricultural life. The 
bulk of the Walloon population lives in the in- 
dustrial beehives that crowd around our coal dis- 
tricts; while the Flemings are essentially agri- 
cultural. The Walloons will tell you that the 
Flemings are a heavy, slow and stubborn race, 

117 



118 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

with a conservative mind, whose ignorance, lack 
of intellectual independence and inclination to 
mysticism make them a prey to the most back- 
ward forms of clericalism. And in fact, Flan- 
ders is a stronghold par excellence of the politi- 
cal and social power of Roman Catholicism. It 
holds the Belgian record of ilHteracy and crimi- 
nality: practically all the conservative votes are 
cast in what the Walloons call the "black dis- 
tricts" of Flanders; and the Flemish country 
people who periodically migrate into Walloon 
territory to do unskilled industrial work are 
looked upon almost as coohes by Walloon labour. 
The mentality of Walloon Belgium, on the other 
hand, compares with that of Flanders hke Lan- 
cashire with Ireland. It is in the former that 
all the progressive movements are fostered; 
three-quarters of the votes cast in the great 
Walloon centres of the mining, metal, textile 
and glass industry are for the Labour Party; 
and it is the only part of the country where 
agnosticism and protestantism amount to any- 
thing. 

Neither race nor language has anything to do 
with this contrast. There is no appreciable dif- 
ference in the ethnological origin and character- 
istics of Flemings and Walloons; the Teutonic 
element prevails with both. True, the Flemings 
speak the same language as the Dutch, and the 
Walloons as the French; and there is, in conse- 



GERMAN MILITARISM 119 

quence, a Germanic influence in Flanders and a 
French influence in Walloon Belgium. But this 
does not at all account for the difference in men- 
tality which I have just set forth. For the Dutch 
brethren of our Catholic Flemings are predomi- 
nantly Calvinists; whilst France — which does 
not, as many foreigners believe, mean Paris — ^is 
a Catholic country, where the conservative psy- 
chology of the peasantry, and of an economically 
backward provincial petty bourgeoisie, is as pre- 
valent as the numerical preponderance of these 
social classes in the body of the nation is great. 
On the other hand, the most reactionary and in- 
tellectually backward element of the Belgian 
population is the French-speaking bourgeoisie of 
Flanders. When I add that in those few Wal- 
loon districts that are purely agricultural, the 
same conservative spirit prevails as in Flanders, 
whilst in Flanders itself there is a progressive 
and non-catholic minority that is practically en- 
tirely confined to the working classes of the few 
industrial towns, it will become obvious that so- 
cial conditions account almost exclusively for the 
difference in psychology of the two halves of the 
Belgian population. 

But then these mental characteristics are no 
more permanent than are those social conditions 
themselves. This is why until the end of the six- 
teenth century, the mental attitude of Flemings 
and Walloons was exactly the reverse of what it 



120 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

is at present. From the thirteenth century until 
that time, Flanders was a hotbed of heresy and 
revolutionism, whilst the Walloon provinces were 
the "black districts" of political and intellectual 
servility. In the latter part of the Middle Ages, 
when all other European countries except the 
Northern Italian cities were still the thralls of 
serfdom, feudalism and popery, the Flemish 
cities were abeady self-governing democratic 
communities. Their internal history is that of 
an uninterrupted series of social struggles, in 
which an indomitable spirit of independence and 
political radicalism manifested itself. Their ex- 
ternal history is that of continuous and success- 
ful fighting in defence of their democratic insti- 
tutions against those feudal powers which, like 
the kings and the aristocracy of France, repre- 
sented the spirit of political conservatism; whilst 
the repeated ban of the Pope bore testimony to 
the persistence of their rebellion against the pow- 
ers of spiritual conservatism. Even the peas- 
antry followed the example of the communes and 
freed themselves from feudal serfdom five hun- 
dred years before the rest of Europe. During 
all that time, there was no stir of life in the land- 
lord- and priest-ridden Walloon districts, with 
the exception of a couple of isolated industrial 
towns like Liege and Dinant. When the great 
revolutionary struggle of the Netherlands came 
to its climax in the rebellion against the clerical 



GERMAN MILITARISM 121 

and despotic regime of the Spanish kings, whose 
vicissitudes fill the m^in part of the sixteenth 
century, protestant, democratic and revolution- 
ary Flanders found no support in the Walloon 
provinces. On the contrary, it is largely (thanks 
to the assistance they lent) to the Spanish that 
the rebelhon was finally drowned in blood. Mass 
executions, the destruction of cities, the banish- 
ment or voluntary emigration of the Protestants 
and revolutionaries marked the beginning of the 
long period of decay in the democratic civihsation 
of a country that was too much in advance of the 
rest of Europe to be allowed to live. The Flem- 
ings then uttered the same reproach against the 
Walloons, as the Walloons of nowadays formu- 
late against the Flemings, namely, that they were 
of a slow, conservative, backward, servile mind. 
And they were just about as right as the Wal- 
loons are now. 

How could the mental characteristics of a pop- 
ulation suffer such a complete inversion within 
a lapse of time of less than three hundred years? 
Simply because the social and industrial condi- 
tions that determine them have been likewise 
inverted. Mediseval Flanders was industrial; 
mediseval Walloonia was agricultural. Flanders 
was then politically and intellectually in advance 
of the rest of Europe, because it was in advance 
economically. As early as the thirteenth cen- 
tury, more than three quarters of the population 



122 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

of practically every Flemish city lived mainly 
from cloth-making. This semi-capitalist indus- 
try, which worked for the export trade, was as 
much of an anomaly in the relative narrowness 
and stagnation of mediaeval economy as the po- 
litical regime of the Flemish communes was in 
the world of feudalism and autocracy. The Wal- 
loon provinces, on the contrary, were still in the 
stage of agricultural serfdom. From this they 
sprang into that of great capitalist industry in 
the beginning of the nineteenth century, when 
the opening of the era of the steam-engine cre- 
ated around their coal fields those huge industrial 
agglomerations which are among the densest in 
the world. 

Since the end of the sixteenth century, on 
the other hand, Flanders has seen her indus- 
trial prosperity come to an end as the result 
both of the opening of new trade-routes and 
of the exhaustion of her population through dis- 
astrous social and political struggles. She be- 
came an agricultural country once more, with 
nothing to remind her of the former splendour 
of her urban economic life but her cathedrals, bel- 
fries, town- and guild-halls — and the dejection 
of the people who lived in their shadow and be- 
came a prey to unexampled pauperism, which 
was at the same time solaced and perpetuated by 
the Catholic Church and her convents. 

The history of the German nation itself, al- 



GERMAN MILITARISM 123 

though it shows no such complete inversion of 
national characteristics, abounds in examples of 
profound modifications within a few generations' 
time. 

I might refer the reader back to my analysis 
of German sense of humour, which shows that at 
the time when all great European nations lived 
under the economic regime of peasantry and 
small artisanship — nameljj, until the beginning 
of modern history — there was not the same dif- 
ference as at present between the characteristics 
of the German nation and those of her western 
neighbours. In the Middle Ages the literary and 
artistic expression of the popular soul was as uni- 
form in countries hke Southern and Western 
Germany, France, England, the Netherlands, 
etc., as were the social conditions themselves. 
Their feudal aristocracy had its common mental 
characteristics, tastes and fashions, including the 
sense of humour, as evidenced by the internation- 
ality of such institutions as the troubadours, min- 
strels and jesters. On the other hand, the uni- 
versal popularity, and the universal origin even, 
of the main poetic works, the folk-songs and the 
mystic literature of that time bear witness to the 
psychological similarity of the common people. 
The association of Germany with such universal 
expressions of plebeian humour as the Historye 
of Reynard the Foooe — Roman du Renard — 
Reinaert de Vos — Reineke Fuchs, or as the Owl- 



124 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

glass — Ulespiegle — Tijl Uylespieghel — Eulen- 
Spiegel^ is striking evidence that the Teutonic 
humour was then on a IctcI with that of other 
countries. The differentiation only began later, 
when new economic conditions created national- 
ity in its modern sense. 

The exceptions to the rule of the universality 
of mediseval literature only strengthen the argu- 
ment. They are practically confined to the free 
bourgeois cities of Northern Italy and Flanders. 
Their early, hothouse-capitahsm created the con- 
ditions that made the beginnings of modern na- 
tional poetry, art and literature possible. 

But we need not go back to the Middle Ages 
nor confine ourselves to the controversial ground 
of literary taste, to find proofs of the transforma- 
tion of the German mind. It is fashionable now- 
adays to explain the hold of mihtary, autocratic 
and intellectual discipline on the German people, 
to a racial disposition, inherent to the German 
spirit. As far as contemporary Germany is con- 
cerned, I shall be the last to dispute the postulate 
that, if ever there was anything to characterise 
the mentahty of a nation, authority-worship is a 
characteristic of the German people. It applies 
to the soldier, who stands brutahties from his su- 
periors to which no other white men would sub- 
mit without immediate retaliation; as well as to 
the scholar, who thinks that scientific research 
consists in the compilation of "authorities"; or to 



GERMAN MILITARISM 125 

the Social-Democrat, who, like Hugo Haase in 
the Reichstag on the 4th of August, 1914, put 
party discipline above his own honour by reading, 
as the president of his group, its historic declara- 
tion in favour of the war-credits, just after he 
had opposed this very policy, in the party caucus, 
as a betrayal of all Sociahst principles. 

The Belgian historian, Henri Pirenne, whose 
patriotic attitude during the occupation caused 
him to be deported to Germany, has told me of 
some of the talks he used to have with the peas- 
ants of Kreuzburg, a township where he had been 
a prisoner for several months. He was allowed 
to go about in the town, and the Belgian Herr 
Professor had soon become a local institution. He 
indulged in frequent discussions of the war with 
the natives, in order to gain some insight into 
their psychology. His conclusion, he said, was 
always the same: *'My dear Herr Nachhar, we 
cannot understand each other; for your grand- 
father was a serf, whilst I come from a country 
where there was no serfdom left after the thir- 
teenth century; in the particular place where my 
family comes from (the village of Franchimont) 
it never even existed." No wonder, then, that 
Freiherr von Bissing, the late German governor 
of occupied Belgium, called the Belgian mind 
"a psychological problem." 

Some of the friends I had in pre-war Germany 
may condescend to excuse me for having taken 



126 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

up arms against them, but if I am to judge by 
what their papers wrote at the time, I am afraid 
they will never forgive that in June, 1917, in an 
address to Russian soldiers, I spoke of the Ger- 
man people as having *'souls of slaves." Yet 
everything I see happening in Germany up to 
this day, even in the German Republic by the 
Grace of Foch, convinces me more and more of 
the truth of what I said then, namely, that in a 
country so void of democratic traditions and rev- 
olutionary spirit a» Germany, people do not even 
understand the meaning of a freedom which they 
have never tasted. There are quite a few Ger- 
mans who have realised that too, and said it less 
pohtely, though perhaps more adequately. Heine 
calls a spade a spade when he says : 

Es fehlt dem Deutschen zum Hunde nur 
Ein richtiger Schweif zum wedeln. * 

The two founders of German social-democ- 
racy, August Rebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, 
must likewise have realised this. At any rate, 
they used to comment bitterly on the lack of grit 
in their own following since social-democracy had 
outgrown its early heroic stage and become a 
mere cog in the wheel of contemporary capitahst 
and militarist Germany. There was the same 
difference between the moral cahbre of Rebel's 
and Liebknecht's generation and that of Scheide- 

* All that a German lacks to be a dog is a tail to wag. 



GERMAN MILITARISM 127 

mann's and Noske's as there was between the 
international pohcy of social-democracy in 1871, 
when Rebel and Liebknecht went to prison for 
protesting against the annexation of Alsace-Lor- 
raine, and that of 1914-18, when social-democ- 
racy declared itself in favour of a plebiscite in 
these two provinces — after they had been occu- 
pied by Foch. ^ 

I remember Rebel — ^the "old lion," as he was 
then called — at the Congress of the Social-Demo- 
cratic party in Jena in 1905, using the same word 
as Heine when he referred to the submissiveness 
of the German workers. It was just after the 
ruling classes in several cities, like Hamburg, 
Dresden and Liibeck, had changed the local suf- 
frage system so as to deprive labour of any 
chance to become a majority.?- As in Saxony in 
1897, when the three-class system of voting was 
introduced, there had only been a platonic and 
ineffective protest. Rebel contrasted this atti- 
tude with the Russian revolution, which had then 
just reached its cUmax, and with the efforts of 
the Relgian workers who, in 1893 and 1902, had 
conquered extensions of the suffrage with the 
help of the general strike. "We are far behind 
the bourgeoisie of previous centuries," he said; 
"for it has continuously struggled for the main- 
tenance of its liberties ; whilst we seem to be in- 
different when we are robbed of our right to vote 
and submissively receive lash upon lash across 



328 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

our backs." When his passionate outburst cul- 
minated in the self -accusation, "Hunde sind wir 
ja doch!" (What hounds we are!) the audience 
applauded with fury, not knowing the extent to 
which, ten years later they were to prove the 
truth of the indictment. 

Karl Liebknecht on the other hand often told 
me how he had inherited his hatred of German 
servihty from his father, Wilhelm, who used to 
say that he thought the Germans constitutionally 
unable to undertake anything that was "ver- 
boten" by the police, even though it were a rev- 
olution. Wilhelm Liebknecht used to say to his 
son that although from 1878 till 1890 (when the 
Bismarckian policy practically outlawed the so- 
cialists), they had been compelled secretly to 
evade the law and disobey the police, they did so 
with a heavy heart and without showing any 
capacity for conspiring against authority. 

Nevertheless, to explain German militarism 
and despotism by this psychological feature is to 
mistake the cause for the effect. One need not 
go very far back in the history of Germany to 
find that, when other social and political condi- 
tions prevailed, the mentality of the German 
people was different as well. Those who believe 
in a permanent and constitutional, or even racial 
inability of the Germans to revolt against ty- 
ranny, forget that in the Middle Ages and at the 
beginning of modern times, the German cities 



GERMAN MILITARISM 129 

like Cologne, Strassburg, Constance, Nuremberg 
and many others have been the theatre of as rev- 
olutionary popular risings as those of any other 
places abroad where the social conditions were 
similar. They forget that the great rebellion of 
the German peasantry in the first half of the six- 
teenth century, though it did not achieve any 
more lasting political results than did the similar 
movements in France or England, could well 
compare with them in intensity and determina- 
tion. And above all, they forget that the world 
owes to the German people the fruits of a gigan- 
tic revolutionary struggle that ranks, with the 
English revolution of the seventeenth century, 
and the American and French revolutions of the 
eighteenth, amongst the great achievements that 
have founded modern democratic civilisation : the 
Lutheran Reformation. Where was then the 
slavishness of the German mind. 

Some theorists of national hatred, especially 
amongst the French and the Belgians, have said 
that the German nation should be wiped out, be- 
cause it is psychologically unable to conceive, or 
to adapt itself to, a political regime other than 
that of centralised autocratic power. This is not 
even correct as far as contemporary conditions 
are concerned. 

True, there has been in Germany since 1871, 
and especially within the last twenty years of its 
rapid industrial progress a marked propensity to 



130 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

create strongly centralised institutions. Indus- 
trial enterprises, banking concerns, labour unions, 
employers' associations, political parties, official 
insurance bodies, intellectual groupings, all had 
this feature in common that they had invested 
their leading organs with an intensely centralised 
power. This, by the way, is not a peculiarly 
German feature. It is inseparable from indus- 
trial progress in any country where this progress 
is rapid and unhampered by survivals of previ- 
ous stages. Some of the economic institutions in 
Anglo-Saxon America, for instance, are at least 
as centralised as similar institutions in Germany. 
And I am not at all sure that the lack of central- 
isation in most fields of the economic life in 
France or Belgium is a token of higher develop- 
ment. 

But if we consider the pohtical institutions of 
Germany, we find that they are much less cen- 
tralised than the French, or than those of any 
other great civihsed country, with the exception 
of the United States. The German Empire is 
a federal body, both in its constitution and in its 
administration; there is a much greater local 
autonomy in provincial or municipal matters 
than in France. The latter country has been fet- 
tered by Napoleon with a system of bureaucratic 
centralisation which the best minds of the coun- 
try consider as a cause not only of economic back- 
wardness, but also of a state of mind character- 



GERMAN MILITARISM 131 

ised by the fear of initiative and responsibility 
that results from overconfidence in the divin- 
ity of the State. Universities, and educational 
institutions generally, enjoy an incomparably 
larger autonomy in Germany than in France or 
Belgium, and have much more pronounced indi- 
vidual features. 

If we look back into the past, we shall find 
that until recently German institutions were any- 
thing but centrahsed, and the spirit of the Ger- 
man nation anything but prone to give up pro- 
vincial, local or individual rights. Worship of 
centralisation is as modern there as centralisa- 
tion itself. Until the creation of the German 
Empire, 1871 — for the mediaeval or post-medie- 
val empire was never anything but a loose fed- 
eration of princes— there was but one sphere of 
German life where centralisation reigned: the 
Prussian army and bureaucracy. And even this 
dates back no further than to the end of the 
eighteenth century. 

It is not German authority- worship that has 
created German militarism; it is German mili- 
tarism that has created German authority-wor- 
ship. And German militarism is the work of 
Prussia; and Prussian militarism is the outcome 
of economic and political conditions that date 
back to the Thirty Years' War. 

Until the latter half of the eighteenth century, 
there was not even such a thing as Prussian mili- 



132 THE REMAKING OP A MIND 

tarism in the sense we now attach to this word, 
namely, a permeation of the institutions and in- 
tellectual life of a country with the hierarchic and 
warhke spirit of a permanent mihtary organisa- 
tion. Prussia itself was but a small part of the 
German nation. Its armed power was very lim- 
ited and, as in all other monarchies and princi- 
palities of the period, consisted of a small force 
of mercenaries officered by the aristocracy. Yet 
conditions in Prussia were such as to make a real 
militarisation of the country possible. It was the 
task that tempted the two Fredericks and which 
they successfully achieved. The Prussian soil 
was barren and the population poor; there were 
practically no cities, and the feudal system had 
been maintained in all its original harshness by 
the Junkers, who, however, on their arid estates 
did not prosper very much more than their peas- 
ants. But they owed a warlike disposition to 
their descent from the colonists who had con- 
quered this originally Slav country; they dis- 
posed of plenty of horses and of the human res- 
ervoir of a strong, hardy, prolific and hungry 
race, used to obedience through generations of 
serfdom, and all the more wilhng to obey in war 
as they had little to lose by absenting themselves 
from their miserable homes. 

Yet Prussia would never have become more 
than a small robber state like many another in 
Eastern Europe, if the Thirty Years' War had 



GERMAN MILITARISM 133 

not created circumstances in the more civilised 
and fertile part of Germany that made her an 
easy prey to the greed of the Prussian Junkers. 
This war had left Germany almost as devasta- 
ted, demorahsed and divided as the revolution 
against Spain had left Belgium a century before. 
Small and poor though it was, Prussia yet repre- 
sented, at the end of the eighteenth century, a 
power more considerable than that of any other 
political or military body in the mass of petty 
principalities that then made up Germany. 

Prussia's first real chance came in 1813. Ger- 
many had been invaded and occupied by Napo- 
leon's armies. For the first time since the Refor- 
mation a national spirit again manifested itself. 
It was the indomitable desire of a people not to 
live under a foreign despot's rule and pay the 
price of his wars with its own wealth and blood. 
When the call to armed resistance came, it found 
a ready instrument in the Prussian army. True, 
this instrument had proved worthless at Jena in 
1806 against the concentrated and self-confident 
power of a really national army; but that les- 
son of ignominious defeat had not been wasted. 
Prussia's mercenary organisation was replaced 
by a popular army, based on compulsory gen- 
eral enlistment, whose creation the popular en- 
thusiasm for a war of national liberation had 
made possible. 

This was the beginning of Prussian hegemony 



134. THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

over Germany. It could not, however, be con- 
summated immediately after the war was over, 
as there was not then the same imperious need 
for complete political unification as there was in 
France or England. Germany was still in the 
agricultural and artisan stage of local and pro- 
vincial economy. Its slowly rising commercial 
and industrial bourgeoisie, who needed national 
unity for their expansion, and its intellectual 
class, who were still inspired with the patriotic 
enthusiasm of 1813, were too weak a minority 
to prevail against the power ^ of inertia of the 
princes. An attempt undertaken in 1848, under 
the influence of the Paris revolution, to create a 
democratic national state, failed miserably. 

Another national war was required to enable 
Prussia to gather the fruits of 1813. Bismarck, 
the typical representative of the Junker class, 
prepared it. It was won in 1870-71, after the 
prelude of the war with Austria, thanks to the 
efficiency of the Prussian army and administra- 
tion. The Prussian Junker stood godfather to 
the Empire. It has remained true to the aus- 
pices under which it was born. The Great War 
was the ultimate outcome of the permeation of 
the German nation with the spirit of militarism 
and submissiveness to its lords, which three or 
four generations had sufficed to instil. 

The links of this historic development are so 
obvious that no mythical explanation by a racial 



GERMAN MILITARISM 135 

disposition towards servility is required. Ger- 
man national psychology, as it was since the 
iThirty Years' War, was related to the original 
causes of the development of Prussian mihtarism 
only in so far as the mentality of any population 
of poor and ignorant peasants — ^used to tradi- 
tional submission to their landlords — ^will always 
make them suitable raw material of soldiers, ir- 
respective of race or nationality. Exactly the 
same causes created militarism in Russia, the 
Hapsburg monarchies, the Bulgarian States, and 
in Japan, with similar psychological results. 

Whilst the characteristics of race remain prac- 
tically permanent within any historical period, 
those of nationality may change within one or 
two generations. There is striking evidence of 
this in the ease with which the first generation 
born on American soil of immigrants of any 
European nationality becomes Americanised, 
provided that it really lives under American con- 
ditions and not in a colony or ghetto which is but 
an annex of the original fatherland. 

Most of the characteristics of contemporary 
Germany which every free civihsed man has such 
good reasons to abhor have been acquired within 
the last two generations. To me they appear to 
be due, not only to the influence of militarism, 
but altogether to the pecuhar circumstances of 
the over-rapid development of German capital- 
ism. It should be kept in mind that until the last 



136 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

quarter of the nineteenth century, Germany was 
a predominantly agricultural country, with a 
peasantry that had so recently been freed from 
feudal servility that it had had no time to lose 
the mental characteristics of this system. By an 
abrupt transition, in less than a generation, it be- 
came a great industrial country of the first order. 
Now a country may within thirty years develop 
from a nation of serfs into a nation of capitahsts 
and industrial workmen; but it cannot within 
such a short space of time evolve industrial 
civilisation and the higher forms and traditions 
of political and spiritual life that correspond to 
it. 

England and Germany are about on an equal 
level of capitalist development. But the Enghsh 
mind has the culture that corresponds to it be- 
cause it has had three centuries in which to form 
it; the German mind has not. This is why in the 
native country of the Hymn of Hate and ''Gott 
strafe Englandr the upper classes, in spite of 
their proclaimed contempt for the "nation of 
shopkeepers" across the North Sea, made such 
hopelessly funny and funnily hopeless attempts 
at looking like Englishmen. The more a par- 
venu tries to look smart, the more he looks a par- 
venu. This showed itself not in fashion alone, 
but in the whole mental and moral attitude of 
the German upper classes, whose sudden pros- 
perity had gone to their heads. It made the dom- 



GERMAN MILITARISM 137 

inant philosophy of the German nation — which 
until the middle of the nineteenth century had 
been idealistic and ethical — materialistic and util- 
itarian. During my stay at German universities, 
I have often been struck by the contrast between 
the spirit of what was left of the old idealistic 
generation, as represented by some of the pro- 
fessors, and that of the students, whose coarsely 
materialistic outlook on life and unabashed revel- 
ling in every form of physical and intellectual 
brutality gave me a foretaste of what a German 
invasion would mean. Amongst the older pro- 
fessors and their generation in general, I have 
known a few men of as fine and gentlemanly a 
character as may be met anywhere in the world, 
even though they did not try to knot their ties 
like Englishmen or to produce "tooth-brush" 
moustaches like Americans. But I found none 
amongst the future reserve-officers of Hinden- 
burg's army who did not illustrate the truth of 
the saying that the only thing Germany never 
succeeded in making out of coal-tar is a gentle- 
man. I saw another proof of the fact that over- 
rapid capitalist development had shaken the 
moral foundations of the nation, in the appalhng 
extension of perversity and of immorality not 
merely in the conventional, but in the true eth- 
ical sense of the word. It seemed to me to be the 
consequence of the natural inability of the nerves 
and the conscience of a people who had been liv- 



138 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

ing for generations in old-fashioned humdrum 
social surroundings, to adapt themselves sud- 
denly to the dizzy rhythm of super-modern capi- 
taUsm, with its unbinding of the traditional ties 
of a sedentary homelife and its unbridUng of new 
needs', appetites and ambitions. 

Now a similar rupture of the moral equilib- 
rium is bound to happen wherever similar social 
causes prevail. There are many instances of it 
outside of Germany, in other historical epochs, 
and even in ours. What, however, made Ger- 
many's case worse, not only for herself, but for 
the rest of the world, is that these causes were 
not counterbalanced by the self-adjusting influ- 
ence of adaptable political institutions and^the 
self -educating effect of political freedom and de- 
mocracy. The spirit of Germany's government 
was hardly more than the transposition of a mili- 
tary hierarchy and disciphne into the plane of 
poHtical institutions. The tragedy of the sudden 
growth of German capitalism out of semi-feudal 
conditions was that German capitalism had 
adapted semi-feudal institutions to its purpose. 
This purpose was double: to keep the lower 
classes down, and to conquer the world (as was 
so nicely expressed by the German military ter- 
minology which used to refer to the "interior 
enemy" and the "exterior enemy"). But the in- 
strument was single : mihtarism. 

I have never ceased to be convinced that the 



GERMAN MILITARISM 139 

war which had resulted from this system could 
only end by its destruction. And thereon I 
based my hope that Germany, freed from a sys- 
tem that had turned what was once a true and 
kindly people into an object of deserved execra- 
tion by the whole world, might once again become 
a nation of poets and thinkers, worthy to lay 
claim on the inspiration of Luther, Kant, Goethe 
and Beethoven. 

So let us hate without moderation, where mod- 
eration would be weakness, but with discrimina- 
tion; hate the German system with all the capac- 
ity of our souls for passion; hate it even outside 
of Germany, wherever the spirit of militarism, 
submissiveness to despotism, class-egoism and 
brutal materialism is to be found — and we shall 
often find it nearer to ourselves than we imagine. 
But to hate the eternal soul of a nation, strug- 
ghng Hke all others from darkness to light, from 
crime to virtue^ is to fall into the very error that 
has proved so fatal to Germany herself. 

I had never imagined that the ruhng classes of 
Germany would act any better than they did 
when the beast of German mihtarism was event- 
ually let loose. But, like most sociahsts abroad, 
I had en^ed in my favourable judgment of Ger- 
man social-democracy. The revision of this 
judgment in the light of facts was one of my 
main preoccupations during the first stage of .the 
war, and it put my whole conception of socialism 



140 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

to a test that upset my belief in man}^ idols which 
I now found false. 

I was known in the Belgian movement not 
only as a great admirer, but even as a promoter 
of the methods of German social-democracy. 
Two years before the war, I had been almost ex- 
pelled from the Belgian Labour Party for my 
criticism of its* opportunist short-sightedness and 
lack of a clear doctrinal conception, a criticism 
largely inspired by my admiration of the clear- 
cut rigidity of German social-democratic policy 
and its permeation with orthodox Marxianism. 
The Belgian Committee for Workers' Educa- 
tion, which I had spent three years in setting on 
foot, had been modelled on the example of the 
German Arheiterhildungsausschuss. As an ad- 
visory member of the executive of the Belgian 
Federation of Trade Unions, I had successfully 
promoted a system of national centralisation, or- 
ganisation by industries, and federative relations 
between the trade unions and the Labour Party, 
copied from the German model. I had collected 
a considerable amount of money for an insti- 
tution that allowed intelligent young Belgian 
workmen to spend a few months in Germany, to 
study German industrial and trade union meth- 
ods on the spot. I had organised and conducted 
three extensive tours of Belgian trade union and 
Labour Party officials to Berlin and other Ger- 
man cities, with the avowed purpose of convert- 



GERMAN MILITARISM 141 

ing them to the superiority of the German plan 
of the labour movement. Many of these things 
I do not regret in the least. I am still as con- 
vinced as I was then of the superiority, in any 
highly developed capitalist country, of central- 
ised industrial labour unions over the old system 
of local craft unionism. I still beheve that Ger- 
many, in the field of the labour movement like 
in all others, was right in giving as much atten- 
tion as she did to education, and that all we can 
reproach her with in this connection is that she 
used this education for a wrong aim. And I do 
not think that any of the Belgian labour unions 
or similar institutions which have adopted the 
methods of organisation which my "pro-Ger- 
man" propaganda had contributed to popularise 
have ever had any reason to regret it. 

A Belgian general under whose orders I have 
served, and who knew of my pre-war activities, 
one day teasingly asked me whether I was not 
sorry for having organised tours of Belgian 
trade-unionists to study German methods. "Not 
in the least, sir," I answered; "my only regret is 
that I could not organize similar tours for our 
generals." The general changed the subject. 
He had particularly good reasons to know that 
many things might have taken another turn in 
1914 if the bulk of our officers had then been up 
to the Berlin standard in strategy and science of 
organisation. 



142 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

Yet I am all the more ready to confess that I 
have been cruelly disappointed in my rehance 
on what German labour would be able to achieve, 
thanks to its excellent methods of organisation 
and thorough theoretical training. 

It did not take me long to realise that what was 
wrong with German social-democracy was due 
to deeper causes than the shortcomings of its 
leaders. The bankruptcy of a tradesman can be 
explained by his individual incapacity to carry 
on his business ; but it is as f oohsh to explain the 
failure of German labour to oppose the aggres- 
sive imperialist policy of their government, by 
the stupidity, cowardice or treason of their lead- 
ers, as it is to consider the bolshevik movement 
in Russia as the consequence of Lenine and 
Trotzky being bribed by German gold. Surely 
it is hard to imagine anything worse than the lack 
of insight and character shown by the leaders of 
German social-democracy on the 4th of August 
and thereafter; but their appalhng mediocrity 
and dastardliness were but a reflex of the men- 
tality of the masses they represented. 

From my knowledge, which is fairly intimate, 
of conditions and people in the German labour 
movement, and my passionate study, through the 
reading of their papers and literature, of their 
attitude during the war, I have never had the 
shghtest doubt that the entire mass of the Ger- 
man working classes, with the extremely few ex- 



GERMAN MILITARISM 143 

ceptlons of those that did not follow the maj ority 
social-democrats, are responsible for the attitude 
of their leaders on and after the 4th of August, 
1914. If there ever was a case where the leaders 
— and poor Ipaders they were anyway — were led 
by the masses, this was one. The war was not 
the Kaiser's; it was the German people's war. 
Until they got sobered by irremediable defeat, 
they were all united by a common purpose. 

When the rulers of Germany started the war, 
they indeed succeeded in making the nation be- 
lieve that it was a war of national defence. But 
the sheepishness with which the social-democratic 
leaders, on the 4th of August, 1914, swallowed 
the most transparent pretexts for war used 
by the government, showed that they were glad 
enough to avail themselves of these excuses for 
paying no attention to the violation of Belgium 
in their zeal to hypnotise the masses with the fear 
of the Cossacks. Yet these same social-demo- 
crats, who had previously made the faithlessness 
of the HohenzoUerns a popular byword, had 
plenty of reasons to mistrust their government. 

As soon as the masses themselves saw that the 
war promised to end with crushing victory, they 
became intoxicated with the desire, which had 
been that of the rulers from the beginning, to use 
it as a means to establish a mihtary hegemony 
by Germany over the world. Never during the 
war has the policy of the majority social-demo- 



lU THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

crats, who undoubtedly represented the practi- 
cal unanimity of German labour, pursued any 
other aim than to help Kaiserism to achieve this 
purpose. All their theoretical assertions about 
the capitahst origin of the war, all their jere- 
miads about the impossibility to develop demo- 
cratic institutions in Germany as long as its fron- 
tiers were threatened by a world intent on its 
destruction, were but camouflage. They did not 
hide the fact that whenever Germany's strategi- 
cal posftion was favourable, the Social-Demo- 
crats kept quietly in the background and joined 
in the paeans of victory ; whilst as soon as affairs 
took an unfavourable turn, they volunteered to 
do the dirty jobs of imperial diplomacy, by ad- 
vocating a lame peace and using their prestige 
with the socialist parties of other countries, both 
neutral and belligerent, to unnerve the resistance 
of the Entente countries by fostering dissension 
amongst their population. 

But sentence has been so definitely .passed on 
the guilt of German social-democracy that it is 
useless to discuss it any further. Much more 
interest attaches to the causes of the contrast 
between its tremendous power of organisation 
and the pusillanimity of its action when the ag- 
gressive policy of German imperiahsm put its 
sincerity and courage to the test. 

The 4th of August was less of a surprise to 
many socialists outside of Germany than is now 



GERMAN MILITARISM 145 

generally believed. Jean Jaures had voiced the 
feelings of practically all those who knew Ger- 
many when he said at the International Socialist 
Congress of Amstej'dam in 1904, in his famous 
oratorical duel with August Rebel: 

"There is a menace that hangs over Europe 
and the world, a menace to peace, to our liber- 
ties, to the development of the socialist and labour 
movement, to political and social progress at 
large. . . , This menace is the pohtical impo- 
tence of German social-democracy. Certainly, 
you are a great and admirable party, which has 
given international sociahsm some of its most 
powerful and deepest thinkers, and the example 
of methodically coordinated action and progres- 
sively strong organisation. . . . Yet, the more 
your power increases, the more manifest becomes 
the contrast between your apparent political im- 
portance, as measured by the increasing figure 
of your votes and your representatives in pubhc 
administration, and your real influence, your real 
force of action. On the day after the June elec- 
tions, when you polled a three million vote, it be- 
came clear to all that you had an admirable re- 
cruiting power, but that neither the traditions of 
your proletariat, nor the mechanism of your con- 
stitution put you in a position to utilise this 
apparently colossal power." 

The most conclusive evidence of the "pohtical 
impotence" of German social-democracy has al- 



146 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

ways been her persistent refusal to fight mih- 
tarism. At the time of my collaboration with 
Karl Liebknecht's antimilitarist propaganda, I 
had ample opportunity to see for myself how 
stubbornly the leaders of social-democracy re- 
fused to undertake anything which might have 
weakened the military machine of Prussianised 
Germany. So far as it did not consist of the 
mere utterance of non-committal platitudes, their 
activity was confined to combating such minor 
abuses of the system as the ill-treatment of sol- 
diers by their superiors, and the insufficient pay- 
ment of the non-commissioned officers and men. 
I happjened to be associated with one of the first 
public utterances that attracted international at- 
tention to this attitude of German social-democ- 
racy. In January, 1906, I pubhshed in the 
Brussels Peuple an interview on the subject 
with the late August Bebel — the recognised lead- 
er of Social-Democracy — whose statements cre- 
ated quite a sensation. They were so characteris- 
tic of the fear of the German Social-Democrats 
even to say anything that might be interpreted as 
an infringement of national solidarity, and so 
dominated by the conviction that in case of war 
the masses would obey the government's orders 
irrespective of what social-democracy would say, 
that Georges Clemenceau, then editor of the 
Paris Aurore, wrote the following comment: 
"We know perfectly well what Bebel would 



GERMAN MILITARISM 147 

do in case of war. He would protest, as in 1870, 
and would, together with a small group of his 
comrades, heroically face imprisonment. As to 
his party, and as to the 'working class' of Ger- 
many, they would be in the ranks, and use their 
guns and rifles against the 'working class' of 
France." 

Alas 1 Clemenceau proved too optimistic, even 
though he expected no more than a formal pro- 
test by the leaders of German social-democracy. 
Not even that happened ! 

The persistence of the German Social-Demo- 
crats in treating militarism as taboo was such a 
puzzle to the foreign delegates at international 
congresses that most of them, for lack of a better 
explanation, simply believed in the accusation 
thrown in their faces by Gustave Herve at the 
Stuttgart International Congress in 1904?: "Vous 
autres AUemands, vous avez peur, peur, peur de 
la prison!" 

Herve was unjust. Until 1914, there was no 
lack of German Social-Democrats who showed 
the individual courage of putting up with im- 
prisonment for taking part in the general activity 
of the party. The root of the evil lay much 
deeper. It was social-democracy itself, the Ger- 
man workers as a whole, who had in the inmost 
recesses of their conscience accepted German 
militarism as a necessary institution, against 
which it would be futile to rebel. If the party 



148 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

had engaged in anti-militarist propaganda, they 
would have put Herve in the wrong on this point 
by carrying out the party's decision in that case 
also, at the risk of any number of years in jail. 
They would have done so out of party discipline. 

I knew enough of Germany and the Germans 
to be sceptical about their inclination to rebel 
against authority. Yet I hoped until 1914 that 
the very strength which their party discipline 
gave them and the slow but thorough action of 
their theoretical propaganda would ultimately 
create such a colossal power and such an extreme 
tension between the ruHng classes and the prole- 
tarian block that revolution would unavoidably 
follow. . . . 1914 made me realise that I 
had hoped against the obvious. The worst of the 
German system of government was that, through 
its systematic permeation of the whole nation, in- 
cluding social-democracy, with the spirit of mili- 
tary submissiveness, it deprived its natural oppo- 
nents of the very qualities which they required 
to fight it. 

When I was in Russia in 1917, the late George 
Plekhanoff, with whom I had been acquainted 
for several years, reminded me of a little incident 
that throws a characteristic light on the universal 
and instinctive submission of the Germans to 
mechanical discipline. It happened in 1906, in 
Mannheim, where we were both attending, as 
fraternal delegates, the Annual Congress of the 



GERMAN MILITARISM 149 

Social-Democratic Party. One afternoon, we, 
together with Karl Liebknecht, entered the exhi- 
bition building, where the Congress was then sit- 
ting. Two long parallel corridors led from the 
vestibule to the hall. As we were about half way- 
down one of these, Liebknecht suddenly stopped 
and pointed to a board — '"Ausgang," We had 
taken the wrong corridor, but it made no differ- 
ence to anybody, as the two corridors debouched 
into the same hall and there was nobody about 
except we three. Yet Liebknecht insisted on 
turning about, and we had to walk about fifty 
yards back in order to enter by the ''Eingang" 
corridor. The mere idea of entering through the 
''Ausgang" was so abhorrent to Liebknecht's 
mind that he would rather waste a hundred paces 
on going back. He was a revolutionary and an 
antimihtarist ; but he had once been a German 
soldier I 

In the army, a German Social-Democrat 
ceased to be anything but a soldier. When I 
was a liaison officer with the British army, I was 
frequently entrusted with the cross-examination 
of German prisoners. They mostly belonged to a 
Saxon Corps which remained opposite our sector 
for about a year. The majority of them were 
working men and social-democrats. Sometimes 
they knew me from my stay at Leipzig. In that 
case, after the mihtary cross-examination, I 
would arrange for a private interview. Then 



150 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

I did all I could to put the man at his ease, and 
asked him to consider me as a ''Genosse" with 
whom he could have a heart-to-heart talk about 
purely political matters. I knew that the desire 
not to give anything away would not prevent him 
from talking freely, for nearly always the Ger- 
man privates proved exceedingly talkative when 
cross-examined and almost anxious to demon- 
strate in this way that they were as submissive 
towards the enemy officer as they had been 
towards their own officers until a day or two be- 
fore. Yet I never succeeded in making my late 
''comrades" unbosom themselves more than they 
would have done with any other officer. They 
remained stiffly at attention and continued to call 
me ''Herr Leutnant" Sometimes they would 
even use the characteristic "Melde gehorsamsty 
zu Befehl," They seemed constitutionally un- 
able to forget, even for one moment, that they 
were talking to a superior. After several experi- 
ences of this kind, it dawned upon me that I had 
never understood the mind of those German 
workers whom I had only studied in civihan life. 
Not until I had faced them as soldiers standing 
to attention did I really know them. 

German social-democracy lacked only one 
thing, but unfortunately it was the only indis- 
pensable thing: the will to fight the mihtary 
spirit by eradicating mihtarism itself. It lacked 
this will because, unhke labour in England, 



GERMAN MILITARISM 151 

France, Belgium and all other democratic coun- 
tries, the German proletariat itself was the fruit 
of a system that owed its development to mili- 
tarism. It had no revolutionary tradition. It 
had, it is true, formed a great party that aimed 
at an overthrow of the social system, but the 
methods and the very thoughts of this party were 
but part and parcel of the spirit of national sol- 
idarity, disciphne and authority — worship that 
was to make Germany foremost in the world. 
Even if they had succeeded in replacing the rule 
of the Kaiser by the rule of the proletariat, and 
in socialising production, though they would have 
improved the material condition of the working 
classes, they would not have improved the soul 
of the nation, which would then merely obey and 
worship another authority, equally oppressive of 
the freedom that makes hfe worth living. In 
short, they did not love freedom as we did in 
Western Europe, because they had never con- 
quered it; and they were no real democrats, be- 
cause they did not enjoy that minimum of politi- 
cal freedom and self-government that makes a 
democracy possible. 

It took me many an hour of pitiless self-criti- 
cism before I came to this conclusion, which 
turned my previous admiration for German so- 
cial-democracy into bottomless contempt. But 
it brought home to me two new truths of which 
I highly value the discovery: the essential impor- 



152 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

tance of political democracy; and the funda- 
mental difference between my socialist ideal, 
based on justice through freedom, and that of 
German social-democracy, based on justice 
through authority. 



VII 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 

No, Bill, I'm not a-spooning out no patriotic tosh 

(The cove behind the sandbags ain't a death-or-glory cuss) 

And though I strafes 'em good and 'ard I doesn't hate the Boehe, 

I guess they're mostly decent, just the same as most of us, 

I guess they loves their 'om^es and kids as much as you or me; 

And just the same as you or me they'd rather shake than fight; 

And if we'd 'appened to be born at Berlin-on-the-Spree, 

We'd be out there with 'Ans and Fritz, dead sure that we was right. 

A-standin' up to the sandbags 

It's funny the thoughts wot come; 

Starin' into the darkness, 

'Earin' the bullets 'um; 

{Zing! Zip! Ping! Rip!) 

'Ark 'ow the bullets 'um! 

A-leanin' against the sandbags 

Wiv me rifle under me ear; 

Oh, I've 'ad more thoughts on a sentry-go 

Than I used to 'ave in a year. 

Robert W. Service, A Song of the Sandbags. 

My attempts to judge objectively the national 
characteristics of the foe might create the impres- 
sion that my hatred of Prussianism was purely 
intellectual. On the contrary, this hatred was 
as instinctive and strong a passion as was my love 
of Germany and my desire to see the German 
nation free and redeemed. 

If it had been otherwise, I could not have 
fought at all. Anybody with a little experience 
of combatant service will admit that hatred is a 

153 



154 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

military necessity. It is as indispensable in a 
war as are weapons or supplies. 

This, by the way, is one of the main reasons 
why war should be opposed as destructive of 
some of the higher impulses which are necessary 
to the progress of mankind. For the kind of ha- 
tred necessitated and generated by a war like 
this is not the enlightened passion that only sees 
in men the victims or the instruments of a sys- 
tem. Nor is it the enlightening passion that, 
through fighting these men, leads to discernment 
and hatred of the system; for experience shows, 
on the contrary, that the fighting tends to inure 
to that system the very men who have set out to 
fight it. 

I hope that in all belligerent countries there 
will be found a sufficient number of combatants 
with the courage to emancipate themselves from 
the sentimental and ethical cant that has been 
brought into fashion with the public by a conven- 
tional. literature, and to say what, if they dare look 
it in the face, they know to be the truth of their 
experience. My conclusion is that the impulses 
which actuated most of the combatants had very 
little to do with the ethical motives, preached by 
the leaders of public opinion, for or against cer- 
tain systems of government. They were accept- 
ed as more or less mythical symbols, that is all. 
The masses everywhere started fighting because 
they were forced to do so, or led to believe — 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 155 

whether rightly or wrongly, need not concern us 
here — through the machinery by which a leading 
minority makes public opinion, that they were to 
defend their homes, their families and their pos- 
sessions against an enemy bent on taking all this 
away from them. And they went on fighting, 
because fighting itself created, by the action of 
military discipline, the additional impulses with- 
out which it could not have lasted, to wit; the 
inculcation of the sense of duty, solidarity and 
comradeship; the suggestive power of the in- 
stincts of imitation, emulation and pride; and, 
chiefly, the spirit of revenge. It is obvious that 
all these impulses are blind, that is, their working 
is independent of the motives of the minority that 
disposes of the machinery through which they 
are created. Experience has shown that this ma- 
chinery was equally effective in all European 
countries, whether the motives of the men at the 
rudder were ethically good or bad; at any rate, 
it was so for four years, both in the armies of the 
Central Powers and those of the Entente. 

This at any rate applies to the European 
armies. From the little I have seen of the Amer- 
ican army I take it that there was, to say the 
least, a much larger proportion of conscious ethi- 
cal motives in its ranks than in those of any Euro- 
pean power. This was obviously due, for a con- 
siderable part, to the higher level of popular 
education in America. The fact that the elemen- 



156 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

tary teaching in American boys' schools is done 
by women and that rehgious bodies are, as a rule, 
much more permeated with ethical life than those 
of the European continent, probably also con- 
tributed in making the average American soldier 
more receptive to considerations of justice and 
human fairness at large. Furthermore, the 
American army was largely selected from 
amongst the best part of the young generation, 
which has naturally enjoyed the benefit of better 
educational methods. But the chief reason of the 
American army's greater consciousness of the 
ethical war-aims clearly originated in the fact 
that the motives of the American Government 
itself were disinterested. After the country had 
long remained neutral for lack of an immediate 
interest in the conflict, the war had to be made 
popular by a propaganda in which indignation 
against the brutality of Germany's aggression 
and methods of warfare proved the most effective 
means to arouse public opinion. It will be the 
everlasting pride and glory of the United States 
to have set a unique example in the world's his- 
tory by engaging in a war like this for interests 
not particularly their own, but common to all 
mankind. 

In Europe also, ethical motives played a large 
part in war propaganda. Above all, the viola- 
tion of the neutrality of Belgium stirred what is 
conventionally called the pubhc mind in many 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 157 

countries. This especially applies to England. 
There the war would hardly have been popular 
enough in the first days had it not been for the 
appeal to her chivalry that was answered by the 
sending of an expeditionary force to redress the 
wrong done to Belgium. But important though 
this motive was, it was only with a minority of 
the combatants that it was strong enough to act 
as an actual impulse to fight. 

There is, of course, a mutual reaction between 
what the people at home think and what the com- 
batants at the front do. However, I am not 
dealing here with the motives of nations at large 
— which are a problem by themselves, and a 
very complicated one, too — but merely with the 
passions that make the combatant minority do 
the actual fighting. They are two quite differ- 
ent questions. It is easier to make a civilian 
in Chicago who reads his newspaper at break- 
fast curse the Kaiser and wish he could throttle 
the Crown Prince, than to make a soldier cross 
a bit of ground swept by machine-gun bullets, 
to go and kill people whom he has never seen 
and against whom he has no individual grudge. 
If you talk from a soap-box to a crowd at home 
in order to incense it against the enemy, there 
is no nonsense you can not make it swallow, pro- 
vided that you appeal to the sense of morality 
and chivalry which it will take a childish pride 
in demonstrating. But it is a different matter 



158 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

to talk to soldiers before an attack. I have 
known Belgian officers — especially amongst the 
regulars, used to the grandiloquent barrack- 
ground eloquence of peace-time — who thought 
they would improve the fighting determination 
of their men by talking what the men themselves 
despised as "patriotic stuff"; and I have heard 
the comments of the audience afterwards. I am 
thankful that I had this experience before I be- 
came an officer myself, for it has put me on my 
guard against a similar mistake. When, later on, 
I became a trench mortar officer in the Belgian 
army, I could not have made a so-called patriotic 
speech to my men even if I had been promised 
a V. C. for it. It is the sort of thing a General 
or a Secretary for War may do. If his eloquence 
remains within reasonable bounds, it will merely 
be taken by the hearers as matter-of-fact evi- 
dence that something particular is expected of 
them. If it has the tactlessness to overemphasise 
the necessity of sacrifices, which are the daily lot 
of the listening soldier, whilst they mean some- 
thing much less personal and immediate to the 
speaker, its effect will be the opposite of what 
was intended. It will then give rise to sarcastic 
remarks among the men about people who ought 
to know what they are talking about, people who 
would do better to see to it that there is less plum- 
and-apple jam and black haricots, and people 
who are not going to bother very much anyway 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 159 

about what will happen to Jim's "Missus" and 
kiddies if Jim gets '"napooh-ed" that night. 

But for a lieutenant or a captain, who will 
have to face the music himself along with his 
men, to talk patriotism or "ethical motives" to 
them, would be a mistake which they would only 
forgive him if they were exceedingly fresh from 
the drilling-camp or fond enough of their leader 
to take a lenient view of his eccentricities. For 
about a year I have been in command of as brave 
a lot of soldiers as could be found in any army ; 
but I knew well enough that if there were noth- 
ing to make them fight but the desire to see 
Germany punished for having broken a pledge, 
or to make the world safe for democracy, they 
would rather have left the fighting to others. 
Ninety-five per cent of them were almost illiter- 
ate peasants and laborers, who could not have 
pointed to Germany on a map of Europe, or 
answered a single elementary question about the 
difference between the Constitution of Germany 
and that of their own country. What was de- 
mocracy to them? A word, no more, which at 
the utmost they were prepared to accept as a 
symbol for the realities that really mattered in 
their lives: their little house, their family, their 
cows and pigs and chickens, their potato-field and 
their right to sit at a certain table in the village- 
inn on Sunday mornings. 

Why, then, did they fight? First of all, to 



160 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

defend their home, their people, their cattle, their 
field and their rights in the village-inn against 
people whom they did not know, but of whom 
they believed that they wanted to take all these 
things away. This at least had made them will- 
ingly obey the order of mobilisation. But now, 
as months and years went by, and war became a 
routine, with its set rules, traditions and habits, 
like working in the fields or in a factory, the 
vision of home created a sentimental longing for 
it more than a militant will. Only those who 
knew that their home had been actually destroyed 
or their people ill-treated by the foe were still 
actuated by the will to follow up their vendetta, 
with a fury increased by the rage of being unable 
to get at close quarters with an enemy who had 
dug himself in so near. The desire to recover 
their homes did not again become a general im- 
pulse to fight until the final great offensive, which 
aimed at the throwing back of an enemy that for 
four years had prevented them from going home. 
To drive this enemy away, the men of Belgium 
and Northern France, like those of Serbia, fought 
with the fury that prefers knives to bayonets. 
But during the four years of stabilisation along 
the Flanders front this possibility seemed but re- 
mote. I have at that time often heard men say: 

"Why does not this b war end? After all, 

those b Boche fellows over there are just in 



WHY ME]>^ FOUGHT 161 

the same b mess as we are. They must be 

just as keen on getting home as we are." 

Something else was therefore required to make 
the men fight and stand hardships which seem 
to have put back beyond any reasonable bounds 
the limits of human endurance and nervous 
strength. 

One motive common to the generality of com- 
batants, and perhaps the most powerful and last- 
ing, was the sense of duty. By this I mean 
something quite different from the desire to 
achieve a purpose consciously accepted as good. 
It was at the same time something less than 
that, and something more. Less, for individual 
reasoning had played no part in formulating the 
moral imperative; more, because the instinctive 
sacrifice to a duty not checked by self-criticism 
demonstrated the tremendous elementary power 
of the desire not to disappoint others who ex- 
pect something of you. It is this instinct that 
makes it normal for the least educated of com- 
mon labourers to do his job well. Many people 
who have to make others work lose sight, in the 
shortcomings of individuals and the petty cares 
and difficulties of the daily routine of industrial 
life, of the depth and power of this sense of duty, 
this natural pride of a man in his work. Leaders 
of industry too often forget that this moral value 
is the most essential of all the means of produc- 
tion which they control, and that therefore there 



162 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

is but one problem in labour management : to en- 
courage, to develop and to educate that instinct. 
I did not realise myself how much reliance could 
be placed on it until I experienced it as a com- 
mander of men at the front. It is one of the 
discoveries I made during the war, and it has 
done a good deal to strengthen my belief in the 
soundness of the fundamental social inclinations 
of human nature. 

To those who hold a false romantic view of a 
soldier's life in the Great War, this likening of 
fighting to an industrial job may seem odd and 
artificial. They do not realise that most of a 
soldier's duty is work anyway. Actual individual 
figliting is an exception. I know many soldiers, 
even in the infantry, who were at the front from 
August, 1914, till November, 1918, and behaved 
like heroes, yet never had an opportunity to look 
an enemy in the face. But even if they had, the 
main motive of all their actions would not for a 
moment have ceased to be the same quality of 
self-respect that in professional life manifests 
itself as a workman's pride. 

People who are used to think for themselves, 
or imagine they do, are too often inclined to take 
a false rationalistic view of the psychology of 
the masses. They ascribe all action to conscious 
individual reasoning and fail to realise that the 
majority of ignorant peasants and labourers, who 
formed the bulk of European armies, were but an 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 163 

instrument for the accomplishment of other peo- 
ple's thoughts. Perhaps it is as difficult for these 
rationalists to understand mass psychology as it 
is for the superior intellect of man to comprehend 
the working of an animal's brain. Let us keep 
in mind, then, that the individuals who formed 
the masses referred to were accustomed from 
their childhood to take for granted the ethical 
imperatives which they saw everybody around 
them accept. Those who did not accept them 
became outcasts, or at least ran the risk of suffer- 
ing such disagreeable consequences as to make 
acceptance of the ruling of public opinion the 
most commodious course to an ordinary mind. 

When the war broke out, the imperative was : 
to obey the orders of the powers that be ; which, 
for the soldiers, meant to fight. It was pro- 
claimed through all the channels that usually 
direct the actions of men : the state, whose power, 
moreover, appeared suddenly to have reached 
overwhelming proportions; law and justice; the 
newspapers ; the churches ; the schools ; the polit- 
ical parties; in short, through the whole machi- 
nery that forms public opinion. Not to accept its 
ruling meant to put oneself beyond the pale of 
human society. No ordinary human being felt 
even tempted to do it. For the imperative of pa- 
triotic duty was equipped with those attributes of 
sacrifice to the common good that appeal to all 
the social impulses of man. Who obeyed it earned 



164 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

praise and admiration, who shirked it was de- 
spised and execrated by everybody around him. 

Once in the ranks, the average soldier felt the 
same disposition not to deceive those who ex- 
pected certain things of him, and who therefore 
equipped him, paid him and looked after his 
needs, as he had been used to feel in civil life 
towards his employer. He grumbled when he 
thought that the >other party was not fairly ob- 
serving the terms of the contract, by neglect or 
avarice, but he nevertheless considered himself 
bound to do his part. Being a soldier means to 
be a piece of a huge mechanism of which all 
parts are clearly interdependent. The chiefs 
must care for their subordinates' well-being, and 
are responsible for their behaviour ; therefore they 
must be obeyed. But there is more: a soldier's 
life or death depends on his comrades doing 
what is expected of them. Here the instinct of 
solidarity comes into play, one of the most im- 
perious in the life of masses habituated to live in 
common, to suffer in common, and to act in com- 
mon. The longer the military association lasts, 
and the richer the experience of the need for 
comradeship grows, the more this impulse be- 
comes dominating. 

There are some who are more afraid of death 
than most men, while with the bravest there are 
moments when fear threatens to have the best 
even of comradeship. Here discipline inter- 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 165 

venes. It is primarily the iiabit, which eventu- 
ally becomes a need, to do certain things auto- 
matically, as the result of drilling. A man who 
faces the bayonet of an opponent, even though 
he be afraid, will not as a rule have his will 
paralysed by fear, for it is now governed by the 
reflex with which he has been inculcated on the 
drilling-ground, where he got into the habit of 
making certain corresponding movements with 
his own bayonet. The desire to get at the ene- 
my's throat that was wont to be awakened by 
these movements as he faced an imaginary foe 
on the drill ground is now recalled by associa- 
tion. Discipline smothers fear. Again, even if 
the force of habit acquired by drilling fails, 
there i:s the menace X)f the officer's pistol or of the 
court martial with its power to inflict a death 
more certain than the one that threatens on the 
battlefield — and ignominious into the bargain. 
But these are exceptions, though they are not by 
any means as rare as most people think. As a 
rule, the latent power of the disciplinary ma- 
chine to oppose the fear of death in front by the 
fear of death behind is, in the soldier's mind, but 
the supreme symbol of the imperative of duty 
and solidarity. It is characteristic enough in this 
respect that in those bodies of troops where, as 
in the Russian army under the Soviet regime, 
courts martial were composed of soldiers, their 
sentences against cowards or deserters from duty 



166 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

were more merciless than those of the officers' 
courts had been. 

On the other hand, conspicuous obedience to 
the commands of duty results, or may result, in 
rewards, as the praise of the officers, mentions in 
despatches or in the order of the day, decorations 
or promotion. Soldiers of a certain experience 
are much more sceptical about the value of these 
than is civilian opinion, for they know too well 
how little justice and discrimination is often 
used in conferring certain of these distinctions. 
When, however, they really confirm the suf- 
frages of the hero's comrades, they are all the 
more valued. Anyway, they always carry with 
them a sufficient amount of consideration to be 
appreciated by those who earn them or expect 
to do so. Perhaps these are but a minority, but 
this minority is usually composed of those who, 
having more ambition, initiative, and desire to be 
distinguished above the others, are the natural 
leaders whom the herd follows. 

There is another fundamental instinct of man 
that makes him willing to fight the more the 
longer the fighting lasts: his desire to retaliate 
for blows he has suffered hunself, or has seen in- 
flicted on his comrades. 

In this connection I remember an incident 
that throws a characteristic light on soldiers' 
psychiology in trench warfare. It happened in 
March, 1917, in the Belgian lines in front of 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 167 

Dixmude, where I was then in position with my 
trench mortar battery, a short distance in rear 
of our first hne. The latter was only about 
thirty-five yards away from the enemy, who held 
the opposite bank of the Yser. Things had been 
fairly quiet for some time, except for desultory 
bombardments in the re^r and the usual ma- 
chine-gun and rifle fire at night. The natural 
consequence was that the fighting morale of the 
infantry fell rather low. I must add that there 
was a certain amount of discontent on account 
of various extraordinary hardships that had re- 
sulted from a long spell of severe cold. Per- 
haps, also, the news of the revolution in Russia 
and of the fraternisations on the Eastern front 
had suggested imitation in the minds of a few 
light-headed boys. Be that as it may, for a few 
days in succession there had been a kind of tacit 
truce along the first line, with several attempts 
at communication. They were timid at first, 
and mostly consisted in the throwing over of 
jocular messages. Then some Belgian soldiers 
threw letters across with the request to send 
them on to their families in occupied territory. 
Finally a few men got up on the parapet on 
both sides and talked to each other as well as 
they could. As far as I could make out, the 
contents of their conversation were quite harm- 
less, and mostly in the nature of jocular re- 
marks about the duration of the war and similar 



168 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

subjects of common interest. Yet, needless to 
say, the whole trend of affairs was such as to 
expose the culprits to severe disciplinary pun- 
ishment, though it probably escaped the notice 
of their officers, who were sonie distance away, 
as the first line was but a system of outposts 
very thinly held. I overheard some of the re- 
marks of my own men, who were, like myself, 
watching events from the rear, and others were 
reported to me later on. They were all more or 
less to this effect: "What's the harm, after all, 
in talking to these chaps? They've been pretty 
decent of late. They haven't thrown over no 
grenades for more than a week. They are poor 
blokes like us. Their positions aren't a rap more 
comfortable than ours, you know, and the frost 
must have cut off their supplies of potatoes just 
like ours. They say their officers are brutes. 
. • , They say their women and children are 
hungry. . . . Aren't they men like us? I bet 
they care for their own people, and want to get 
back home just as much as us!" 

Suddenly a shot rang out from our line, and 
reports say that a man dropped from the Ger- 
man parapet. A Belgian officer, whose action, 
by the way, was diversely judged by his com- 
rades, had fired it. The Germans retaliated with 
a few grenades, and after -a couple of minutes 
the whole place was as "lively" as ever before. 
Blood had flowed, and called for blood. Pale 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 169 

faces and drawn features told of hatred infiamed 
by the spirit of revenge. Everything that had 
been said about "those poor blokes over there" 
was forgotten. They were "Boches" and "grey 
vermin" once again. I think if I had allowed 
my men to send a few "flying pigs" over to 
them — for which there was no tactical need — 
they would have kissed my hands. 

Then it struck me that the shot that had cre- 
ated such a revulsion of feelings was like a 
symbol of the first shot that, on the first day of 
the war, had hit a man somewhere in Europe, 
and awakened his comrades' thirst for revenge. 

The same apparent contradiction in the sol- 
diers' feelings towards the enemy will have 
struck anybody who has witnessed many scenes 
with prisoners. You could see one of our men 
come limping from ^n attack with a bandaged 
leg, his face still pale, his lips still blue and 
tightly pressed, his eyes still bloodshot with the 
intensity of his fury. This man has lived for 
an hour, perhaps,, with no other desire than 
to kill Germans, to kill them with his bayonet 
rather than with a bullet, to kill them by crash- 
ing their brains out with his rifle-butt rather 
than by pushing his bayonet through their 
body, to kill them with the nails of his fingers 
or his teeth through their throat rather than with 
his rifle-butt — and the accomphshment of this 
desire was more imperious to him than the fear 



170 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

of being killed himself, than pity for a human 
life, than any other thing in the world. 

He meets a wounded German prisoner who, 
perhaps an hour ago, was possessed by the same 
fury, who maybe has even killed some of this 
man's pals. Yet this man will cheer "Fritz" up 
by some rude, jocular remark, whose coarse hu- 
mour but faintly hides the native intonation of 
human sympathy. Not a minute later you will 
see him giving a cigarette to Fritz and lighting 
it for him, and if Fritz proves a little less able 
to walk than himself, he will lend him a helping 
arm and they will hobble off together .... 

These again are exceptions, but this sort of 
scene was to be witnessed any number of times 
and, as far as I know, in any army of white men. 
I fancy it would have struck some of our civilian 
Boche-eaters with awe if they had been able to 
see it. Whenever I did so, it filled me with 
gratitude to the power that, through the darkest 
night of hatred, allowed some sparks from the 
glowing fire of human kindness to remain alight. 
And yet I, too, have often wished I could use 
my finger-nails or my teeth instead of my 
bayonet. . . . 

This I am not ashamed to admit. It is what 
hatred means, and it is this sort of hatred, made 
of the elementary impulses I have just men- 
tioned, which makes soldiers fight, and which I 
have called a military necessity. If you desire 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 171 

the end, you must accept the means. If you 
fight, you must fight well. There are principles 
of efficient fighting, just as there are principles 
of efficient worldng. A fundamental princi- 
ple of all warfare is that efficient tactics must be 
offensive, even though they may be part of a 
defensive strategical plan. To be fit for offen- 
sive action, the soldier must be actuated by the 
desire to get at close quarters with the enemy. 
And — ^though it may sound crude to those civil- 
ians who dream of throttling the Crown Prince, 
but whose flesh creeps at the thought of killing 
a fowl — one does not get at close quarters with 
the enemy for the purpose of sticking a flower in 
his buttonhole, but in order to kill him. Even 
though you hate Kaiserism, or any other ism, you 
simply cannot kill unless you hate the man who 
opposes you because of the colour of his uni- 
form, and for as long as he carries a weapon 
with which he may kill you or your comrades. 

I confess to have felt this hatred, and to have 
fostered it with my men, and I have no other 
excuse to offer than that it was a necessary part 
of doing my duty as a soldier and as an officer. 
This is one of the very reasons why I hate war. 
I have fought in this war because I thought it 
had to be done to make a lasting peace possible. 
And I thank God that I have been able to 
cleanse my soul from hatred as soon as fighting 
ceased to be a duty. 



172 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

But there is military hatred and civilian ha- 
tred. Civilian hatred, however passionate, may 
be purely hostility against a system of govern- 
ment or of thought, or against men who have 
been proven responsible for that system. In that 
case, it is sacred. But it ceases to be worthy of 
any respect when it takes the form of somebody's 
bragging declamation against men whom he is 
certain he will never face and in regard to whom 
he will never himself experience what it means 
to have to destroy life. When to preach the 
doctrine of hatred is (as now it often seems to 
be) but a hypocritical means to get rid of a 
clever commercial competitor, it is wholly de- 
spicable. Even when it is the expression of a 
sincere passion, it will always strike the combat- 
ant, who has paid the toll of military hatred to 
the necessities of war, as a useless, thoughtless 
and tactless exhibition of feelings that should 
have proved their genuineness by deeds alone. 
It is a distinct menace to the intellectual and 
moral life of a people that indulges in it. 

This will explain why, whenever I thought it 
necessary to encourage the fighting determina- 
tion of my men before an action that involved 
the probability of heavy losses, I carefully avoid- 
ed anything that resembled a patriotic oration. 
I knew that it would be received with inward 
contempt by men who wanted no explanation as 
to why they ought to die. The fact that they 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 173 

were there meant that they knew they were ex- 
pected to do their soldier's job. They could be 
trusted to do it— and a ghastly, horrible job it 
was— if I, for my part, did mine. All they ex- 
pected of me was to show them by my deeds 
that I could be relied on as a leader, who would 
cool-headedly do the thinking for them and 
never leave them in the lurch. I knew that, if my 
strength did not fail me, they would follow me 
to the death. Just before the decisive moment 
came, then, I would say to one of my men, who 
I knew, in spite of his good-will, suffered from 
funk, that I trusted him as a brave soldier and 
that, if he did well, he might expect a distinction 
that he would deserve all the more, as he was 
so handicapped by his nerves. To a corporal, 
known to me as being ambitious, I would make 
a casual observation about his chances of becom- 
ing a sergeant. To some of the boys who would 
certainly spread the news round quickly— the 
signallers or the cooks by preference— I would 
remark that the general had purposely selected 
our unit for the job ahead, because he thought 
its success so very important. And at the last 
minute, I would shout to them all: "Now, boys, 
let us show them we have not forgotten Corporal 
A and Privates B and C!" (the names of men 
killed a fortnight before). This was about the 
climax of eloquence I reached during my mili- 
tary career, but I never have had any reason to 



174 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

doubt that it suited the purpose more than any 
great speech that would have appealed to weak 
brains instead of relying on strong instincts. 

At first sight my scepticism about the high 
ethical order of the motives that make men fight 
may seem to contradict my belief in the power 
of the sentiment of justice that inspired the 
people of the Entente countries with a fighting 
determination greater than that which the most 
powerful military machine of the world had been 
able to instil into the people of the Central 
Empires. 

This contradiction is but apparent. I am not 
blind to the fact that the higher order of the 
war aims pursued by the democratic nations of 
Western Europe, and the greater strength they 
gave their populations to stand the stress of this 
war, is the ultimate reason of their victory. 
Both the German army and the German people 
have shown a capacity for sacrifice which would 
compel boundless admiration if it had been dis- 
played in a better cause, and which, even as it is, 
fills one with a sort of involuntary pride in 
considering what a nation of white men can 
achieve when it is strongly organised and fired 
by a common aim. But what was this sacrifice 
in comparison with that to which our western 
democracies consented for the sake of self-de- 
fence! The very fact that they had to fight, 
though loving peace and hating militarism, al- 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 175 

ready put them above a nation of soldiers, 
drilled to the belief in militarism as a means to 
secure their "place in the sun," Moreover, 
Germany had, militarily, the upper hand for 
four years, fought her wars on enemy territory, 
and had victories on all fronts to console her for 
her losses. But what of us? Our armies were 
held in check on our own territories, and for 
nearly four years it seemed as though no offen- 
sive, however lavish of human life, would ever 
be able to hurl the invader back. Many a time 
he threatened, as in the spring of 1918, to resume 
his annihilating sweep of 1914. Yet the darkest 
hours were those of the grimmest determination. 
We could lose and go on fighting. The Ger- 
mans could not. After a few weeks of adversity 
in the summer of 1918, although their orderly 
and slow fighting retreat from France and Bel- 
gium was a strategic victory as compared with 
the rout to which they had put some of our 
armies on the Somme, on the Lys and in Cham- 
pagne a few months before, their power of nerv- 
ous resistance collapsed in a catastrophe of a 
magnitude and suddenness unique in the history 
of the world. They could fight only with vic- 
tory on their side, because they had no other 
purpose than victory and domination. We, 
however, fought in spite of defeat, because we 
were fighting for something higher than a vie- 



176 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

tory of arms. The superiority, of our morale was 
due to the superiority of our aims. 

This, by the way, made me realise from the 
outset that ideal forces, like the attachment to 
liberty, the spirit of justice and of chivaliy, 
played a much greater part in history than was 
dreamt of in the Marxian philosophy that had 
thus far confined my outlook too exclusively to 
the economic aspect of things. But to understand 
how these ideal forces worked, one has to ana- 
lyse the psychological mechanism through which 
the abstract notion of a nation's will manifests it- 
self in the concrete order as a complex of actual 
individual impulses. When we examine the facts 
in the everyday life of the combatants, we find 
that even in the democratic armies of the Entente 
it was only with a minority that conscious and 
enlightened acceptance of the higher motives of 
the nation's policy was the mainspring of ac- 
tion. To acknowledge this fact is not to sin 
against the spirit of democracy. Democracy 
would not be worse served if those who, like 
myself, ardently believed in it, loved it with a 
little more discernment and realised that the 
idea of self-government of the masses is in its 
literal sense a myth. In no democratic country 
on earth is there more than a minority who take 
a conscious interest in public affairs. Majorities 
are the instruments through which minorities 
rule. In this democracy, in its present stage of 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 177 

development at least, resembles all previous, 
non-democratic forms of government. It differs 
from them, first, by the fact that the ruling 
minority is larger than in any autocracy or oli- 
garchy; then, because this minority, in order to 
obtain power, disposes of no means of physical 
coercion and must therefore rely on the machin- 
ery of public education, the press, the churches, 
official organs of "public information," and other 
means of persuasion to create the required dis- 
position in the "public mind"; and lastly, be- 
cause the necessity to use these means of persua- 
sion, and the competition of parties, movements 
and factions, unavoidably result in the indefi- 
nite increase of the quantity and the quality of 
those who take a thinking citizen's part in the 
government of the nation. It is chiefly because 
of this last reason that democracy is superior 
to all previous methods, for it allows of continu- 
ous self-improvement. The great value of de- 
mocracy as it exists is not that it actually means 
self-government of all the people by all the 
people, but that it is the only way which ulti- 
mately leads to self-government of the people 
by as large a number as are capable of partici- 
pating therein. In the meantime, however, let 
us acknowledge the fact that in every existing 
democracy the impulses that make the masses 
act are but an unconscious reflex of the motives 
of the ruling minorities who make public opin- 



178 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

ion. These impulses are seldom inspired by 
purely ethical or intellectual considerations. 
They either rest on the realisation of a supposed 
or real interest, or result from the action of 
such machinery as that of military discipline, 
with the wonderful stimulus it gives to the in- 
stincts of imitation, emulation, solidarity and 
revenge. 

The interest of an analysis of the mechanism- 
of fighting psychology, independently of what 
we may symbolically call the nation's will, re- 
sides in the following conclusion that is to be 
drawn from it. In the hitherto prevailing Euro- 
pean system of compulsory popular armaments 
as instruments of international competition, it 
was always possible for any ruling power, even 
in a democratic country, to make its army fight. 
All that is necessary is that the elementary pre- 
caution be taken to formulate a pretext, plausi- 
ble enough to popular credulity to set the ma- 
chinery in motion. As all modern wars show, 
this pretext has always been easy to find, and 
almost invariably consists in the assumption of 
a defensive purpose. Once the machinery has 
started moving, it collects sufficient impetus to 
move on towards any goal, by the mere play of 
the progressive accumulation of fighting im- 
pulses generated through fighting itself. 

In his admirable book, "Why Men Fight," 
Bertrand Russell has emphasised the necessity. 



WHY MEN FOUGHT 179 

for all those who would like to do away with war 
and militarism, to tackle the problem at its psy- 
chological roots. It is of course equally, or even 
more important, that it should be studied from 
the economic and political viewpoint, in order to 
gain a clear understanding of the changes in our 
social and international status that are an essen- 
tial condition to lasting peace. Yet it would be 
wrong to assume, as a carelessly superficial ver- 
sion of Marx's economic interpretation of his- 
tory has too often done, that there are no other 
causes of militarism and war than economic com- 
petition and the political ambitions that result 
from it. Militarism itself, namely the very ex- 
istence of more or less permanent armies in au- 
tonomous states, and its unavoidable encourage- 
ment of latent fighting impulses, is a possible 
cause of war. Economic competition between 
states can work itself out without resort to actual 
violence, just as conflicts between individuals 
can be settled without the help of their fists, or 
as labor conditions can be readjusted without 
recourse to the ultima ratio of strike or lock-out. 
It has been said that Germany might have pur- 
sued her aim of boundless economic expansion 
and world hegemony by the mere use of her 
means of "peaceful penetration," and with a 
better chance of success, rather than by risking 
everything on a war. This remark is only true 
insofar as it relates to what might have been the 



180 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

policy of the German nation if it had been in- 
spired exclusively by an enlightened view of the 
permanent interest of its majority, and not by 
the inmiediate and actual interest of the ruling 
classes and powers. For these ruling interests 
were not identical with those of the masses. 
This, again, is a fact largely, though not ex- 
clusively, due ta the existence of militarism as 
an unconstitutional, but extremely effective 
power within the state, and of a militfiry caste, 
with no interest but war, within the ruling classes 
themselves. The existence of the instrument 
creates the temptation to use it. This tendency 
is so inherent to any permanent army, even in a 
democratic country, that one has a right to be 
sceptical about the power of any measure, short 
of universal disarmament, to insure a lasting 
peace. 



VIII 

HEROISM 

. . . Pslia! the courage to rage and kill is cheap. I have 
an English bull terrier who has as much of that sort of courage 
as the whole Bulgarian nation, and the whole Rflssian nation at 
its back. But he lets my groom thrash him, all the same. That's 
your soldier all over! No, Louka: your poor men can cut 
throats; but they are afraid of their officers; they put up with 
insults and blows; they stand by and see one another punished 
like children — aye, and help to do it when they are ordered. 
And the officers! — well {ivith g^ short hitter laugh) I am an 
officer. Oh, (fervently) give me the man who will defy to the 
death any power on earth or in heaven- that sets itself up against 
his own will and conscience: he alone is the brave man. 

G. B. Shaw, Sergius in Arms and the Man, III. 

There were many other aspects of soldiers' 
psychology that increased my abhorrence of war 
and militarism. I deem it a duty to discuss them 
without fear of hurting the sensitiveness of well- 
intentioned patriots and hero- worshippers. Even 
in our peace-loving democratic countries, which 
entered the Great War to do away with mili- 
tarism, the necessity to use military means for 
that purpose has created, with a large section of 
the population, a kind of enthusiasm that, if it be 
not checked, will make the remedy we have used 
to cure the woi-ld x)f military intoxication worse 
than the evil itself. I am not thinking here of 
the small minority of those who, in every coun- 
try, professed bellicose enthusiasm out of mate- 

181 



182 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

rial interest, but of the much larger class of 
people who are benevolently misled in their valu- 
ation of the influence of military life on men. 
The motives of this class are usually highly 
praiseworthy. They have got into the habit of 
thinking of their boys in uniform with such gen- 
uine admiration that they have unconsciously 
become a prey to the shallow romanticism, en- 
couraged by a hterature largely based on fic- 
tions and conventions, that equips every soldier 
with imaginary virtues, and finally believes in 
the virtue of fighting itself. Yet their error is 
not the less dangerous for being intelligible. 

From my own experience I would say that, in 
the huge majority of cases, the influence of war- 
fare on a combatant results in a considerable 
lowering of his moral level. 

Exceptions are fairly numerous. They are 
mostly to be found in the class of those who, 
having taken up arms out of a well-considered 
conviction of the justice of their cause, are on a 
sufficiently high intellectual level to use their 
experience as a means of spiritual self -improve- 
ment. 

I do not know how large a percentage of the 
American army this element constitutes, al- 
though I am sure that it is considerably higher 
than in European armies. Besides, the bulk of 
the American Expeditionary Force have en- 
joyed the privilege of taking part in the final 



HEROISM 183 

stages of the campaign, when the fast movement 
of events and the continuous activity did not 
allow the original idealistic colour of their mo- 
tives to fade away with time. They have not 
had the experience of year-long trench warfare 
which, being a routine by itself, developed its 
peculiar psychological influence, it is this in- 
fluence which has been the dominating factor 
with the vast majority of European armies to 
which I am referring. 

It should be kept in mind, besides, that the 
composition of European armies, with their com- 
pulsory enlistment of practically all men up to 
fifty or fifty-five years of age, was very different 
from that of the American armies. Many an 
American mother, especially amongst the upper 
classes, will have shed tears of joy in welcoming 
her boy back home from the front, and finding 
that the spoilt child had become a strong, hardy, 
wideawake man. No doubt, in many of these 
cases, the physical improvement will have been 
accompanied by a wholesome strengthening of 
the character, if it were only because of the 
effect the health of the body normally has upon 
the health of the soul. A similar change for the 
better has undoubtedly taken place with a large 
number of young Europeans, to whom the 
change from a sedentary occupation or from 
comfortable idleness to a life in the open with 
plenty of exercise has been a real boon. Well- 



184. THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

to-do people are often inclined to infer, by 
thoughtless generalisation from their experience 
within a limited circle of relatives and acquaint- 
ances, that this is equally true of the majority 
outside of their particular class. They forget 
that this majority, in Europe at any rate, con- 
sists of peasants and working men, half of whom 
are fathers of families and above the age of 
twenty-eight. They had not the same need of 
physical exercise or life in the open as the gilded 
youth of the upper hundred thousand. To them 
the struggle for their daily bread has been as 
good a school of self-help and self-reliance as 
any. It is this class that forms the overwhelm- 
ing majority of the population of Europe, a 
majority whose attitude of mind more and more 
becomes a decisive element in the evolution of 
social and political conditions on the Old Conti- 
nent. Therefore we should try to understand 
their mind by studying it from a different view- 
point than that of our own class outlook. 

One common belief is that the necessities of 
fighting develop a courage which results in a 
lasting and beneficial increase of will-power. It 
is this romantic attitude of the civilian mind that 
sees a hero in every man in uniform and there- 
fore believes that the generation of the Great 
War is going to be of a superior moral quality. 

So let us first agree on what heroism is. To 
kill another man does not necessarily make one 



HEROISM 185 

a hero; on the other hand, it is a commonplace 
truth that heroism may manifest itself in other 
fields than fighting. Heroism is a capacity of 
the will to subjugate impulses or circumstances 
adverse to the fulfilment of a duty dictated by 
conscience. Any victory of the spirit over the 
flesh fought within a man's mind may require 
heroism. Captain Guynemer was a hero, but so 
were Columbus, Pasteur, Abraham Lincoln and 
Eeethoven. And some of the finest examples of 
heroism displayed in this war were set by non- 
combatants of the medical service or among the 
chaplains. 

The commonest form of heroism in war is vic- 
tory of the sense of duty over fear. If there 
were a man who has fought without the experi- 
ence of fear, I would not call him a hero at all, 
for then fighting meant no more to him than 
any sporting achievement. But I doubt whether 
such a man has ever existed. To anybody who 
has frequently been under fire and yet claims 
that he has never been afraid, I would quote 
the opinion of Marshal Ney, whose record is a 
presumption that he knew something of the sub- 
ject: Celui qui se vante de n' avoir jamais eu 
peur est un sacre jean-f outre. 

It is in the nature of contemporary warfare, 
with its constant menace of sudden pain and 
death from a distant and mostly invisible enemy, 
to make fear largely dependent on imagination. 



186 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

It is iK)t in the brunt of battle that "funk" is 
most common, for then action itself generates 
such antidotes as anger or concentration of the 
mind on actual events; it is in the moments 
which precede action, and under any circum- 
stance that makes one realize the omnipresence 
of danger without the resource of being able to 
do anything to escape from it. 

I do not feel that I am boasting when I say 
that my record at the front is not that of a cow- 
ard; for I believe that any healthy young man 
with normal nerves is usually able to check his 
fear to a sufficient extent so as not to be ham- 
pered in his combatant action. So there is but 
little more merit in not being' a coward than 
there is in having a good stomach. Cowardice 
has been the exception in any of the armies that 
were engaged in the Great War; and in nine 
out of ten cases when it occurred, a doctor, even 
without being a specialist in nervous diseases, 
would have been able to ascribe it to some defi- 
nite physiological or psychological defect. But 
fearlessness is just as exceptional. 

I for one confess that there has been hardly a 
week of the nearly three years which I spent at 
the front when I did not feel "funk." Some- 
times, even, a shrewd observer might have been 
able to discern it by exterior evidence, from the 
mere nervous chewing of a pipe-stem to the char- 
acteristic ghastliness of the face that accompanies 



HEROISM 187 

"yon funny feeling in the stomach" which often 
results from an "increased volume of the enemy 
fire." The first time I felt it was right in the 
early days of the war, when my company started 
on a march in the direction of distant but plainly 
audible gunfire. But even after an experience 
of more than two years, I still suffered from 
*'funk," especially when I had to remain inac- 
tive under a bombardment. I might even say 
that I lived in a state of chronic fear, for there 
was hardly a minute when I was free from the 
consciousness of danger and the desire to reduce 
the chances of being hit. When I walked along 
a communication trench I would always keep to 
the safest side, and when passing behind a low 
parapet, I would be careful to keep my head 
down at least as much as was necessary, even 
though the chances of being hit were very slight 
indeed. It is largely to this caution that I as- 
cribe my escaping unhurt, although, as the ex- 
perience of most of my comrades showed, the 
odds were greatly against me. 

Now, the sort of precautions I just referred to 
were by no means generally used by soldiers and 
officers, for exactly the same reasons that account 
for the recklessness of workmen who get so used 
to the dangers of their profession that they lose 
consciousness of them. Most of those who were 
cautious, on the other hand, were so under the in- 
fluence of habit, as a mere acquired reflex action. 



188 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

It was otherwise with me, for the consciousness of 
danger never left me and I ahnost continuously 
used reasoning to improve my chances of remain- 
ing unhurt. This even developed into a mania. I 
often caught myself carefully weighing in my 
mind all the chances of being hit by some missile 
in some particular spot as compared with an- 
other spot a couple of yards away, taking into 
account almost imponderable circumstances, to 
the utmost extent of my intellectual ability. 
The disproportion between the intellectual effort 
and the irrelevancy of the object of my analysis 
often struck me and eventually made me realise 
that I had gotten into the habit of using reflec- 
tion as a means to bridle my imagination and to 
distract fear. I have known a few other sol- 
diers who confessed to me that when "alone with 
their thoughts" in some more or less dangerous 
spot they used the same method. They also 
were afflicted with a power of imagination above 
the average. It is worth noting that the fear 
they would have felt if they had given their 
fancy the rein would not at all, in view of the 
anodyne circumstances, have paralysed or han- 
dicapped them for action. Therefore, I would 
rather ascribe this desire of escaping the effects 
of even slight fear to the intuition that any de- 
gree of "funk" results in considerable nervous 
strain. One's instinct to save himself useless fa- 
tigue made one naturally try to avert this. 



HEROISM 189 

With the large majority of soldiers, however, 
whose power of imagination did not exceed the 
average, and in whose every-day actions indi- 
vidual reasoning played but a small part, there 
were but two great antidotes to fear: habit and 
anger. 

I had never fully realised the power of habit 
until I saw the miracles it worked at the front. 
The effect of heavy shellfire, for instance, that 
constantly threatens sudden, cruel laceration by 
a mass of steel that may explode anywhere about 
you without any forewarning, is beyond expres- 
sion nerve-racking to any normal human being. 
In the earlier stages of the -campaign, the effect 
on our brave but unprepared troops was such 
that a position wasr usually evacuated as "un- 
tenable" as soon as any volume of artillery fire 
began to concentrate around it. A few months 
later, the same amount of shellfire would be 
faced with almost absolute equanimity. I re- 
member how one day the trench mortar positions 
I commanded had been shelled to such an ex- 
tent that with a little bad luck half of my men 
might have been wiped out. Fortunately, there 
was no worse damage than the explosion of a 
couple of tons of our ammunition. The whole 
"show" had no stronger effect on my men than 
to make them grumble at the prospect of the 
work they would have to do with sandbagging 
and bomb-carrying. For myself, I felt posi- 



190 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

tively annoyed at the thought of having to ^vrite 
a long report, with a new statement of my re- 
serve of ammunition, by the light of a flickering 
candle under the three feet high ceiling of my 
dug-out. Then I smilingly remembered how 
Dumouriez had almost lost the battle of Valmy, 
which decided the fate of Europe for a century 
or so, because of the panic created by the ex- 
plosion of an ammunition wagon. This proba- 
bly represented about one-twentieth of the total 
amount of high explosive that had gone up 
within four hundred yards of me within less than 
twenty minutes, with no other result than that 
next day's Belgian communique would perhaps 
mention "lively French artillery activity about 
Steenstraete." 

Men get used to everything. It was the same 
with rifle bullets. An old-timer would always be 
able to tell a novice in trench life by some in- 
stinctive motion — a slight ducking of the head, 
or a glance cast aside, as if he expected to see 
the bullet pass — when a *'blue bee" buzzed near 
by. Even people otherwise used to trench life, 
but who had been away from it for a short time, 
would act in a similar way, which is of course 
senseless, since a flying bullet is invisible and you 
are past danger when you hear it. It usually 
does not take more than a quarter of an hour in 
the trenches to realise this, and then less atten- 



HEROISM 191 

tion is paid to bullets than to the humming of 
an insect. 

The lower the level of intellect and imagina- 
tion, the quicker this inuring to danger will be. 
I have often noted the amazement of troops bil- 
leted in towns that were frequently bombarded, 
at seeing how little notice the civilian inhabitants 
took of the shelling. One would see the women 
come out of their houses to watch the shellfire 
that might have struck them dead any second. 
The hasty conclusion of the military onlooker 
usually was that "these people knew no fear." 
A wrong inference, for these same women had 
probably all been seized with hopeless panic when 
their town was first bombarded. But afterwards 
they got used to it all the easier as they did not 
realise that the distribution of the points of im- 
pact of projectiles aimed at an area that in- 
cluded their own little house was, within the 
bounds of certain mathematical laws, a mere 
matter of luck. Yet, somehow, they would not 
consider themselves as being threatened until a 
shell hit their immediate neighbours' house or 
dropped in their own garden. Then, although 
their chances were no worse than before, they 
would pack their bundle and leave. I have wit- 
nessed this sort of thing dozens of times. Every 
time it again strengthened my conviction that 
the actions of the majority of people are in- 
spired by subconscious forces, like instinct and 



192 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

habit, rather than by reasoning, even though but 
little elementary reasoning be required. 

In actual battle, however, this familiarity with 
danger would fail to make soldiers immune 
against the paralysing influence of fear, for 
danger is likely then to assume forms novel and 
unexpected, even to veterans. Yet it is much 
easier to overcome fear in action, however risky, 
than when one has to stand enemy fire without 
being able to do anything to "return the com- 
pliment." In actual battle, anger and hatred 
are the natural antidotes of fear. 

Heroism has much less to do with all this than 
romantic people are prone to believe, for the 
actions of men dominated by anger mostly lack 
that essential element of heroism, consciousness. 
The soldier who risks his life in an attack may 
be a hero all the same, for he may have been 
inspired by conscious motives — patriotism, de- 
votion to humanity, or self-sacrifice to com- 
radeship — of which his participation in this bat- 
tle was the consequence accepted beforehand. 
Yet in the huge majority of cases it remains 
true that the intensity of blind impulses like an- 
ger or desire to kill is so great in the thick of 
the fray and so obliterates consciousness that 
there is more scope for the lowest instincts than 
for the highest. 

By instincts of a low moral order I mean 
those that are not directed towards a social pur- 



HEROISM 193 

pose involving some personal sacrifice to a com- 
mon cause, but that are destructive of such pur- 
pose and of life generally. Joy in killing is 
such an instinct. And my sad experience is that 
it is this instinct, rather than any of the higher 
impulses of heroism, that has been developed 
through fighting. 

It has become a platitude to say that the few 
centuries of cultured life that have been the 
privilege of our race have only been able to mod- 
ify some of the outward characteristics of the 
human mind, whilst the fundamental instincts 
that form our character are still those of our 
ancestors, the cave men. 

There are pessimists, by the way, who infer 
from this that our increase of intellectual power 
and of knowledge has merely put a more re- 
fined instrument at the disposal of our original 
bad instincts, and adorned our native brutality 
with hypocrisy. I think they are wrong, how- 
ever, in assuming as an axiom that the instincts 
of the prehistoric man were bad. On the con- 
trary, I hold the optimistic belief that the 
fundamental instincts of our race, even if we as- 
sume that they have not changed since our an- 
cestors dwelt in caves or forests, still serve the 
purposes of our present social ethics to the same 
extent as they did when they were the moral 
cement of the earlier forms of human society. 
For our so-called "scientific" pessimists, after 



194. THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

all, show a curiously unscientific want of appre- 
ciation of the social ethics of early human com- 
munities and the individual instincts resulting 
therefrom. They assume that these instincts 
were confined to a mere brutal desire of indi- 
vidual domination and joy in killing. This is 
not even true of the most primitive forms of 
social life. And what an abyss between these 
cave-dwellers and the incomparably higher level 
of the social institutions and ethics of our race 
during the many centuries that immediately pre- 
ceded Christian civilisation ! Therefore, I do not 
believe that the solution of the problem of 
ethical education nowadays consists in the eradi- 
cation of those primitive social impulses by "in- 
tellectual enlightenment." I rather see it as a 
higher synthesis in which these impulses would 
be utilised and progressively brought under the 
control of conscience. 

This programme sounds modest enough after 
nineteen centuries of Christianity; but has this 
war not again made clear that even now, in spite 
of Christian ethics and political democracy, what 
we pride ourselves on as civilisation or culture is 
still the superficial appanage of a hundred thou- 
sand, whilst the pittance of the masses consists of 
a few crumbs from their table? This is as true in 
the field of ethics as in that of art, knowledge 
or hygiene. Even when these masses follow the 
lead of a thinking minority, they are but obeying 



HEROISM 195 

the obscure ancestral instincts. So modern de- 
mocracy, especially since the Great War has 
made these masses a decisive factor in history, 
still finds itself confronted with the old problem: 
i to make human civilisation a real civilisation of 
all men and women. This can only be done by 
providing their mass instincts with the conscious 
guidance of the intellect. Any attempt, based 
on a rationalistic philosophy or on Utopian de- 
sires, to impose upon these masses a conception 
of the brain or an ethical imperative contrary to 
the native instincts and material interests that 
are the driving power of their common actions, 
would be doomed to failure. All that human 
intellect can do at our present stage of social 
progress is to enlighten those eollective passions 
so as to keep them from being destructive of 
the common good. Then they are bound to 
serve progress. If even this scheme does not 
prove too ambitious, we shall have reason enough 
to congratulate ourselves. 

Even such racial instincts as result from the 
fighting activity of our ancestors, normally at 
war with animals, their neighbours or other 
tribes, although at first sight they seem to be 
destructive of hfe, can be made to serve the 
purpose of human improvement. For this im- 
provement is a dialectic process in which fighting 
qualities are required of those on whom the vic- 
tory of progress over the retrogressive tenden- 



196 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

cies depends. Has the Great War for "democ- 
racy and a lasting peace" not proved to all true 
Christians that "fighting the battles of the 
Lord" is more than a figure of speech? Is not 
the right of insurrection a cornerstone of all the 
historic statements which, like the American 
Declaration of Independence or the French 
Droits de VHomme, form the universal charter 
of democracy — a democracy born of the exer- 
cise of that right? Is not combativity, the con- 
tinuous exercise of the "unahenable right to 
kick," within the organised bounds of the party 
system as without, an essential condition to prog- 
ress in any self-governing country, and part of 
the very spirit of democracy? Is not the idea of 
the self-government of nationalities, which has 
triumphed in the war through the defeat of the 
dynastic principle, inseparable from the desire to 
defend this self-government against any menace 
from abroad? Is not the very existence of a 
League of Civilised Nations conditioned by its 
readiness to fight for the maintenance of its con- 
stitutional pact either against a felonious con- 
federate, or against the aggression of, say, a 
less civilised power from outside? 

And on the other hand, have not our inherited 
fighting and hunting instinct, through combin- 
ing with man's intellectual curiosity, created the 
spirit of adventure to which modern civilisation 



HEROISM 197 

owes its splendour, its wide expansion, and its 
fast progress? 

Are not those instincts the psychological basis 
of the sporting life which, by promoting chivalry, 
fair play, modesty in triumph and dignity in 
defeat, proves almost as great a benefit to the 
ethics of a nation as to its bodily health? Do we 
not commonly measure any man's sense of hon- 
our by his readiness to fight for it, whether it be 
with his sword, his fists, or with the means that 
the organisation of social justice and public 
opinion put at his disposal? 

I have indulged in this digression because I do 
not want to be misunderstood when I oppose 
joy in killing as a morally low instinct to com- 
hsLiive heroism as a high ethical impulse. Both 
are the outcome of those fighting instincts we 
have inherited from our ancestors, the warriors 
and hunters. Both have been fostered by the 
war. The combative spirit at large I call a good 
instinct, because it is a necessary condition to 
social progress; joy in killing I call bad, for it 
is destructive of social life. 

yet while the combative spirit that makes he- 
roes out of men finds a natural outlet in almost 
any field of human activity, and therefore needed 
no war for its development, the old slumbering 
instinct that makes a man enjoy his power to 
destroy and to kill has been called back to life. 
This war has aroused it in millions as nothing 



198 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

else could have done. If those who have un- 
bridled it could but know how immensely power- 
ful it is! The supreme joy it gives to a man 
who realises his power to hve by his abihty to 
take another's life, calls imperiously for repeti- 
tion, for killing again, for killing more and 
more! 

I had thought myself more or less immune 
from this intoxication until, as a trench mortar 
officer, I was given command over what is prob- 
ably the most murderous instrument in modern 
warfare. At any rate, by combining the de- 
structive power of heavy artillery with the close 
range and easy observation of infantry fighting, 
it gives one the most intense realisation of de- 
structive power. One day, after expending a 
few rounds on finding the range, I secured a 
direct hit on an enemy emplacement, saw bodies 
or parts of bodies go up in the air, and heard the 
desperate yelling of the wounded or the runa- 
ways. I had to confess to myself that it was 
one of the happiest moments of my life. "You 
didn't half look funny when we sent them Boches 
up, lieutenant," said my observing signaller as 
he sat down, rubbing his hands contentedly, to 
a mug of coffee in my dugout. "Gosh! didn't 
you turn pale, and didn't you just open big 
eyes, and didn't you yell — almost as loud as 
them Fritzes themselves what runned away!" 
The fellow was right, and made me feel ashamed 



HEROISM 199 

that I had broken my golden rule never to show 
emotion to my men. But then, as I recollected 
those minutes so crowded with thoughts and 
events that they leave a man exhausted of nerv- 
ous strength, I realised that I had yelled with 
delight, that I could have wept with joy and, if 
I had dared to, kissed the man next to me, who 
was as excited as I. What are the satisfactions 
of scientific research, of a successful pubhc activ- 
ity, of authority, of love, compared with this 
ecstatic minute when you see how your brains, 
your nerves, your careful nursing of the killing 
machine entrusted to you have given you this 
power to take Hfe away from those who are 
striving to take it away from you! Oh, how 
tame and petty seems ordinary life in compari- 
son with this! If I could only obey the will of 
my animal instinct, I would this very day start 
on a journey of ten thousand miles if by so do- 
ing I might enjoy something analogous to a 
"direct hit" and revive the rapture of those 
voluptuous seconds. 

Now, fortunately enough, I have to obey other 
voices than those of such instincts, and so do 
most men ; otherwise we should all be rogues and 
murderers. As soon as I realised the bestiality 
of my joy, my conscience felt such a burning 
shame that its impression will probably be as 
lasting as that of the incident that caused it. 
I know of a few friends who have similarly suf- 



200 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

f ered, and felt the same wave of remorse. But I 
also know that the majority of men have felt the 
ecstasy of killing without this sense of contri- 
tion. I am certain that by -making millions of 
ignorant peasants and laborers — ^whose instincts 
have never known any law but their interest 
and the commonly accepted traditions of their 
class — taste the brutish delight of killing, a 
phantom has been conjured up more easily than 
it will be banished. Should conditions arise in 
the life of these masses that either make it in 
their interest to murder, or else create a common 
feeling in favour of class terrorism, they might 
remember how easy if is* to take another man's 
life, and what a delight there is in doing it. 
Criminality in Europe is already alarmingly on 
the increase since the beginning of demobilisa- 
tion; political assassination is the order of the 
day ; and there is a distinct tendency towards the 
use of violence in the social upheavals that 
threaten to spread all over Europe. It is true 
there are some obvious economic causes for all 
this, and that these may be temporary, but the 
psychological causes are perhaps equally impor- 
tant, and they will last at least as long as the 
present generation. Who would not, in view of 
these facts, be seized with the apprehension that 
the immediate effect of the war on the masses 
who fought it may have been to make brutes 
rather than to create heroes? 



HEROISM 201 

As far as the Central Powers are concerned, 
there is no doubt about the answer to this ques- 
tion. Even before the end of hostilities, there 
was already a terrific increase of criminality, es- 
pecially amongst deserters or men on leave from 
the front, and amongst the adolescent imitators of 
their elder brothers in Feldgrau, Besides, the 
masses of the civilian population were constantly 
tempted, or even compelled, to infringe the laws 
and regulations on food supplies and similar sub- 
jects, not based on conscious popular consent, 
but imposed by the ruling powers. The com- 
plete disruption of the normal relationship of the 
sexes, moreover, resulted in a veritable moral 
dissolution of the nation. All this undoubtedly 
played a large part in the final breakdown of 
Germany and Austria-Hungary. Similar con- 
ditions would already have resulted in similar 
results in Western Europe if their influence had 
not been counteracted by the higher ethical war 
aims, which eventually proved a better means of 
keeping up both morale and morals than any 
appeal to national pride and lust of conquest. 
There is all the more reason to fear the un- 
bridling of the beast should the allied govern- 
ments succumb to the temptation to misuse their 
victory, forget the ideals for which they have 
made a generation sacrifice itself, and betray the 
hope of a better world that they have awakened 
in the masses. 



202 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

It is self-evident that an analysis of the ethical 
reaction of actual fighting does not by any means 
exhaust the problem of the influence of the war 
on himian psychology. Even if we confine our 
analysis to the armies, we should keep in mind 
that combatants proper form a minority in every 
one of them, and that even as far as this minor- 
ity is concerned, actual fighting was only one of 
the numerous occupations that have influenced 
their frame of mind. I have focussed my dis- 
paragement of popular romanticism upon the 
effect of fighting, because it seems to me that 
this is the subject on which clarification is most 
needed. But there are other aspects of soldiers' 
psychology which I cannot extensively dwell 
upon here, but which might equally well be taken 
as objects of a similar analysis, and lead to a 
similar conclusion. There, also, it would be quite 
different from widespread misconceptions. 

One of these is the belief in the favorable in- 
fluence of discipline on the formation of young 
men's characters. Now there are, again, two 
sides to this question. It is obvious, on the one 
hand, that military discipline is likely to have a 
beneficial effect on spoiled children and on the 
egotism of young intellectuals. In a more gen- 
eral way, every soldier has had so many oppor- 
tunities of realising what a paramount necessity 
there is in warfare to obey the orders of respon- 
sible leaders, that this realisation must have done 



HEROISM 203 

a good deal to stren^hen the spirit of self- 
sacrifice for common purposes. But I believe 
that this favourable influence is at least balanced 
by the detrimental effect of discipline on per- 
sonal initiative and activity. This at any rate 
applies to the disciplinary methods that prevailed 
in continental European armies, which were all 
more or less inspired by the Prussian model. My 
experience with soldiers of the so-called lower 
classes has taught me that after several years of 
military discipline they will have lost many of 
the qualities that are required of good and useful 
citizens. They become so used to be looked 
after by their chiefs, to do nothing but what they 
are ordered to do, and not to care about any- 
thing for which anybody else can be made re- 
sponsible, that they lose much of their spirit of 
initiative and self-reliance. This seems to be 
corroborated by the actual experience of many 
people who have had good reason to complain 
about the indolence of discharged soldiers whom 
they have employed. 

Another widespread exaggeration is in the 
belief that by sending millions of soldiers into 
far-away countries a very great deal has been 
done towards spreading knowledge of foreign 
languages and conditions, widening the outlook, 
and creating new bonds of friendship between 
the populations of the allied countries. Now it 
is obvious that experience of foreign countries 



204 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

has been gained, new ties between their peoples 
created, and incentives towards the learning of 
foreign languages given on such an enormous 
scale as would not have been possible but for this 
world war. But it will be wise, I think, not to 
be too sanguine about the better mutual com- 
prehension of national civilisations that may 
result therefrom. The people who make this 
mistake have no accurate representation of what 
the actual conditions were under which the con- 
tact between armies and populations took place. 
What has the French peasant who has had Tom- 
mies or Sammies billeted in his farm, or the 
Italian haberdasher whose customers they were, 
learned about Anglo-Saxon civilisation? The 
few words of broken English which these 
Frenchmen or Italians have picked up may have 
helped them in their business — for to most peo- 
ple in the war-area with whom the troops came 
into contact, war had become an industry — but 
they will hardly ever become an instrument of 
their own culture. I once tried to get out of a 
shrewd old Frenchwoman, who had been billet- 
ing British officers and soldiers for a couple of 
years, what idea she had formed about English 
ways and customs. "They are not bad fellows. 
Sir," she reflected, "if you know how to handle 
them; but surely they will all die from rheuma- 
tism, for they are like ducks, they bathe and 
wash everyday I" From a fairly extensive ac- 



HEROISM 205 

quaintance with Flemish and French towns 
where British troops have been billeted, I would 
conclude that this good lady voiced the appre- 
hensions of their inhabitants in general, who 
from the "duck-habits" of the occupants have 
drawn no other conclusion than that it results 
in a splashing-about detrimental to the fur- 
niture, especially if the latter is of polished 
mahogany. 

And what have the huge majority of our Tom- 
mies and Sammies seen of France or Belgium 
that would make them understand and love 
French or Belgian civihsation? Whenever they 
could escape the filthy routine of billeting and 
estaminet-sitting in the wretched little towns of 
the front-area, and unless they confined them- 
selves to their own national atmosphere in their 
Y. M. C. A. huts, they naturally sought solace in 
the shabby soldiers' entertainments which part of 
the population in the larger cities had made it a 
trade to provide. These could no more give them 
an idea of What is really worth knowing about 
the indigenous civilisation, than a week's outing 
in the cosmopolitan amusement quarters of Paris 
would acquaint an upper-class American or 
Englishman with the spiritual life of France. 

In many cases the contact between the civilian 
population and the armies of another country 
has resulted in strengthening their sense of the 
excellence of their own national peculiarities, in- 



206 THE KEMAKING OF A MIND 

stead of reducing the differences. The relations 
between Belgium and France are so excellent 
and intimate that there is hardly any risk of being 
misinterpreted when I say that my pretty ex- 
tensive experience has convinced me that this 
has been the case with these two nations. Almost 
without any exceptions, the Belgian soldiers and 
refugees who spent the duration of the war in 
France have neither increased their own appre- 
ciation of the national characteristics that differ- 
entiate the French from them, nor have they in- 
duced the French to do the same with regard to 
the Belgians. 

Let us examine facts instead of indiscrimi- 
nately taking for granted sentimental platitudes 
which fit better into diplomatic speeches than into 
reality. Then we shall realise that more would 
have been done towards a greater mutual com- 
prehension between, say, the peoples of England 
and France by sending a few thousand students, 
artists, engineers, or workingmen from one coun- 
try into the other for a couple of years, to get 
acquainted with real life and civihsation in the 
Universities, Museums and workshops, than 
could be achieved by any Expeditionary Force. 

I have been asked many a time by clergymen, 
especially in America, whether I thought that 
the war had deepened the spiritual consciousness 
of most of the soldiers and made them more re- 
ligious. I would myself call this question the 



HEROISM 207 

supreme test of the psychological influence of 
the war on combatants, provided that religion be 
taken in such a broad sense that it becomes 
almost synonymous with idealism. But then the 
problem becomes so vast that I dare not answer 
by yea or nay. There are so many contradictory 
influences involved, and their relative impor- 
tance varies so much according to the individu- 
als or groups concerned, that I confess myself 
unable to discern what the ultimate balance will 
be. I would however dissuade people from 
overestimating the favourable effect of con- 
stant danger to life on the spiritual attitude of 
soldiers. 

It is a popular notion, in Europe at any rate, 
that people whose occupation constantly con- 
fronts them with a danger that makes them seem 
like toys in the hands of a supernatural and eter- 
nal power, thereby become particularly rehgious. 
Sailors and deep-sea fishermen are the classical 
instances. It is often inferred that this must 
especially apply to combatant soldiers. I doubt 
very much, however, whether it is not merely 
superstition that in these cases is commonly 
assumed to be religion. From my experience 
with Flemish and French deep-sea fishermen, I 
would say that their attachment to the symbols 
of ancestral cult, their idolatry of innumerable 
saints, and the omnipotence of their local clergy 



208 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

are less in favour of their religious turn of mind 
than the general level of their morality is against 
it. I fail to see why the case of the soldiers should 
be different. 

On the whole, I am inclined to beheve that 
whilst the spiritual life of a minority who were 
truly religious from the outset may have been 
deepened by their experience of war, the great 
majority have not had enough native ideahsm 
to counteract the brutalising influence of the 
circumstances they have to live in. This ma- 
jority have reacted to the hardships and the un- 
certainty of life by seeking solace in an essen- 
tially materialistic fatalism, accompanied by an 
inordinate desire for coarse physical enjoyment 
whenever the slightest opportunity occurred. 
When going on short leave from the front, for 
instance, the general disposition of mind was to 
*'have a good time" at any cost; and so-called 
pleasures, which under ordinary circumstances 
would have disgusted a man by their vulgarity 
or immorality, were then excused with the argu- 
ment that perhaps it was the "last chance, any- 
way." 

This was the case, at any rate, with the bulk 
of the continental armies, who had not, like 
the Americans and, in the later stages of their 
campaign, the British, the resource of the mag- 
nificent network of organisations of the Y. M. 
C. A. type, which have proved one of the mira- 



HEROISM 209 

cles of this war. Anybody with some experience 
of the front will understand that the natural re- 
action to months and years of danger, hardships, 
sexual continence, and privation of practically 
any sort of entertainment, is anything but an in- 
ducement to spiritual self -communing. I am 
afraid that the exceptions to this rule are few. 
In spite of the pains I took not to miss the intel- 
lectual and spiritual benefit of my experiences, 
I would not even unreservedly claim the favor of 
this exception on my own .behalf. Life at the 
front has made me superstitious to the extent 
that even now I find it hard not to ascribe my 
good luck to some "mascot" or other tahsman in 
which I confess to have believed. I have often 
caught myself, just before passing a peculiarly 
dangerous spot, in the act of straightening my 
deportment, fingering the buttons of my uniform 
to make sure that they were all right, and reflect- 
ing whether I had shaved recently enough to meet 
death as a smart soldier; but at such moments I 
gave no thought to my conscience. I remember 
how, being on leave in Paris once after a partic- 
ularly severe spell at the front, I felt tempted 
by the programme of a classical concert that was 
to be given that afternoon by a renowned sym- 
phonic orchestra. I thought it would do me 
good, for I had not heard any music but soldiers' 
songs and ragtime improvisations for more than 
two years. So I went there and listened for a 



210 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

couple of hours to Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. 
I could have wept for delight in feehng hke a 
human being again. It was as though I had sud- 
denly been relieved of the armour which had be- 
come identified with myself for two long years. 
But after it was over it seemed to me that all my 
strength had been taken away from me together 
with my armour, and that it would hurt me be- 
yond expression to put it on again. I never felt 
so womanish and altogether so miserable in my 
life. Then I reahsed that it did not do a trench 
mortar officer a bit of good to cultivate "soft 
spots" by worshipping musical beauty. All he 
had to do was to win the war by killing "Boches." 
The less he was a human being, the better he 
would be suited for his job — and there was no 
other job worth doing until the war was won. So 
I concluded that next time, rather than concert- 
going, I would spend my money on a good din- 
ner with a big bottle of wine, to make up for four 
months of poor meals and gather strength for 
another four months (perhaps — "touch wood!") 
to come. 

I am perfectly aware that this will seem 
supremely silly to many people. But then per- 
haps they do not care for good music as much as 
I do — or else they have never fired a trench mor- 
tar. Under these circumstances it has cost me 
some very hard fighting with myself not to lose 
my religion, or shall I say my ideahsm if the for- 



HEROISM 211 

mer term seems inappropriate to describe the 
spiritual attitude of a man haughty enough to 
think his rehgion too big for the size of any 
church or chapel. I doubt indeed whether the 
war has not made me lose some of the human 
modesty that is the fundamental attitude of mind 
required by any Church. I can still feel modest 
when I look up to a starlit sky, or for that matter, 
when I lie down in the grass and stare at the 
flowers and the insects — but I find it very hard 
to bow my head to any living human being or to 
any of their works. This kind of modesty has 
been shelled out of me. I am quite prepared to 
admit that this is probably a moral loss ; but then 
this is no boast, but a confession. I merely think 
it necessary to make it, because I know that the 
same thing has happened to many men of a sim- 
ilar turn of mind who have been through the same 
experience. 

Perhaps this class of men will be able to have 
some influence on the thoughts of the post-war 
generation. If so, I think that their religion 
will be the belief in the infinite perfectibility of 
mankind through the acceptance of Christian 
ethics. But I do not think that they will be in- 
clined to favour the claims of any Church to a 
monopoly of spiritual truth. On the contrary, 
I venture to predict an increase either in the 
number of men who say with Schiller that, be- 
cause they are religious, they do not belong to 



212 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

any religion, or in the movement that by liberal- 
ising, modernising and humanising the Churches, 
tends to suppress the differences between them 
and identify all creeds with the rehgion of 
Christian mankind. 



IX 



IN THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 

Vor dem Sklaven, wenn er die Kette briclit, 
Vor dem freien Mensclieii erzittert nicht! 

ScHiLLEE, Die Worte des Qlaubens, 

In the Summer of 1916, my mental crisis reached 
a climax. A painful intellectual isolation was 
the price I had to pay for my determination to 
judge critically for myself opinions and imper- 
atives that were accepted as matters of course by 
everybody around me. I had many excellent 
comrades at the front, but I never had the good 
fortune to find a friend to whom I could unbosom 
all my thoughts and doubts. This was probably 
for the best, in so far as it compelled me to think 
entirely by myself, and facilitated by emancipa- 
tion from many conventional beliefs. But it also 
caused me great distress, for, as all reasoning has 
a tendency to question its own conclusions, my 
mind left to itself always found new doubts con- 
tinually to arise as soon as I thought that I had 
reached provisional certitude. 

What made the matter worse was that already 
for some months I had ceased to find satisfaction 
in the fulfilment of my duties as haison officer 
with a British infantry division. Work, though 

213 



214 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

plentiful and varied at the beginning, had become 
very scarce, and the job which, although not ex- 
actly "safe," provided me from the outset with a 
comparatively large amount of comfort and inde- 
pendence, had become too easy for my taste. 
Charming though the company of my British of- 
ficer comrades was, I longed to go back to "my 
boys" and experience again the exhilaration of 
responsibility and command. Besides, I had from 
the beginning looked upon my military career as 
an opportunity for self -education of which I 
must avail myself to the utmost, and, for this 
reason, I wished to vary my occupation as often 
as I could. So when an appeal was made to 
Belgian infantry officers to volunteer for new 
trench -mortar batteries that were just being 
formed, I sent in my application and was trans- 
ferred a few weeks afterwards to the Belgian 
trench-mortar battery with which I remained 
until I left the front for good. 

I had selected this post because — save for fly- 
ing, for which I was above age — it seemed the one 
that, in trench warfare at least, promised the 
greatest amount of activity and "liveliness." I 
wanted to be kept busy so as to have httle oppor- 
tunity for thinking; and, besides, I wanted to 
remain true to my principle — never to do half- 
heartedly a thing that has once been recognised 
as a duty, but to concentrate all my strength on 
obtaining the maximum effect. 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 215 

My state of mind at that time was accurately 
epitomised in a letter to a friend to whom I 
wrote : 

"In spite of my critical attitude towards the 
popular views on the ethics of this war, I have 
never felt any real difficulty in doing my duty as 
a soldier. On the contrary, I think I may say I 
have always done it eagerly; but not with the 
eagerness that results from what is generally 
considered as patriotic enthusiasm. You know 
that my patriotism has always been very differ- 
ent from the common brand of jingoism. I think 
war a horrible thing ; I do not hate the Germans 
individually; and I do not consider this war of 
the Entente Powers (which include Russian 
Czardom) against the Central Powers as a strug- 
gle of everything that is good against everything 
that is bad. I can see quite plainly that it is 
merely a struggle between two imperialistic 
groups; but I see equally plainly that one of these 
two groups is much more guilty, and above all, 
much more dangerous than the other. So my 
eagerness to fight simply results from the fact 
that, having once selected a line of conduct dic- 
tated by my own judgment, at this tragical junc- 
ture in the world's history when the sacrifice of 
milUons of lives is unavoidable, I must give my- 
self up entirely, with all the energy and the 
enthusiasm in my power, to the task which I have 
recognised as necessary. So much the worse if 



216 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

this duty necessitates the sacrifice of life, but it 
is obvious that this duty cannot be well done un- 
less this sacrifice be consented to in advance. No 
haggling is possible here. Once circumstances 
which have proved stronger than we (and what 
have we left undone to prevent them?) have put 
us on a road which we must follow, we must walk 
along it resolutely, without looking backward, 
and until the bitter end. Germany must not win 
this war. A victorious Germany would be the 
worst of all possible disasters, for the German 
people themselves as well as for the whole world. 
German militarism must be defeated. Under 
what circumstances and in what proportion will 
the pressure from within Germany co-operate 
with the pressure from without? That I do not 
know. But I am convinced that the only thing 
which can possibly call forth this pressure from 
within — which I consider as an absolute neces- 
sity — is the defeat of the German Army. This 
we can accomplish if we will, even though it takes 
a few more years. But it will take less than that 
if we will strongly enough . . . Your advice 
"spare yourself" is superfluous. I do not look 
upon war as a sporting exercise. I do not seek 
after the rapture of danger subdued, and I never 
expose myself uselessly. But I do not think that 
anybody has a right to consider his own life as 
more precious than his neighbour's. I am con- 
vinced, moreover, that nobody's life has any value 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 217 

at all except what it acquires by its use under all 
circumstances for the common good of mankind. 
Well, then, at the present time, and as far as I 
am concerned, I cannot think of any other pos- 
sible use of life than the fulfilment of military 
duty with the maximum of fighting efficiency 
obtainable."* 

Thus my state of mind remained until the 
spring of 1917. My expectation that my posi- 
tion as a trench-mortar officer on the Belgian 
front would distract me from hypercritical think- 
ing and set my conscience at rest, proved on the 
whole justified. One did not have much time to 
brood over war-aims even when things were 
quiet. The immediate concerns, how to keep 
warm and how to snatch an hour's rest in the 
corner of a dug-out, required nearly all the intel- 
lectual concentration of which a tired man is 
capable. 

My thoughts were almost entirely occupied 
with my men. I had been extremely lucky, for 
the some 200 boys of my battery were all thor- 
oughly good and devoted fellows without a single 
black sheep amongst them. I was, therefore, 
able to maintain discipline and the high standard 
of fighting efficiency required for trench-mortar 
work, without ever having to punish or even to 
give formal commands. We loved each other 
and knew it, although circumstances (no soft 

* From a letter to Mr. Louis de Brouckere, dated August 3rd, 
1916. 



218 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

spots!) did not allow any demonstration of feel- 
ing. I dreaded to show them even a passing 
affectionate glance of the eyes, lest they should 
cease to beheve in my supreme indifference to 
anything but duty and reahse how much it cost 
me to send them to their deaths. Fortunately, 
they were all so magnificently brave that they 
required nothing but warnings to be cautious. I 
know — although they never said a word about 
it — they were very grateful for my efforts to 
create welfare institutions in the battery, such as 
a library, a canteen, a transportable bath, a whole 
equipment for games and sporting exercises, a 
band, courses for the ilHterate, and many other 
things. I was amply rewarded for these efforts 
by the joy I felt in commanding men under such 
exceptionally satisfactory conditions, and find- 
ing that they responded to my will like the 
strings of a well-tuned musical instrument to the 
fingers of an artist. 

To this period, and especially to the winter 
of 1916-17 spent in the Steenstrate and Dixmude 
sectors under extremely trying circumstances, I 
owe the full realisation of the true, deep happi- 
ness that authority over men can bring when it 
is based on mutual trust and sympathy. To me, 
there was no greater joy in military life than 
this; and there is a very simple, but obviously 
heartfelt letter which I received one day from 
the mother of one of my men, of which I am 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 219 

prouder than of the crosses presented to me by 
King Albert and King George. 

Then came the Russian revolution and the en- 
trance of the United States into the war. A new 
epoch opened, and many of the riddles to which 
I had so far only foimd a provisional answer 
were going to be solved. My conscience would 
no longer need to be drugged by the weariness 
that comes from excessive physical hardships. 

The first intimation of the new era that was at 
hand came to me on a happy frosty February 
morning — I think it was the 5th of February, 
1917 — when I got hold of a copy of the London 
Times just left behind by a British officer in 
my billet. It contained the text of President 
Wilson's address to the United States Senate 
on the 22nd of January, 1917. 

When I was in America in 1918, I found that 
very few, if any, of President Wilson's own 
countrymen realised the full meaning of the posi- 
tion he has acquired in the opinion of the intel- 
lect of Europe from the time of that address. In 
his own country, where he is a party leader as 
well as the President, and where, may be, people 
see him at too close quarters to reahse his magni- 
tude as a power in the world's history, I have 
found his image distorted with friend and foe 
alike, by partisanship and by personal sympathy 
or antipathy. Perhaps, on the other hand, our 
opinion in Europe is too much idealized by dis- 



220 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

tance to permit of an accurate judgment of the 
man Woodrow Wilson; but, at the same time, I 
think it allows us all the better to discern the 
great historical features of his character. 

It is possible, moreover, that in this case, our il- 
lusions matter more than the reality. What many 
Americans deplore as his excessive wilfulness 
appears to us as the incarnation of the youthful 
energy of a great democracy moving forward 
along a clear-cut direct line of progress. We 
contrast it favourably with the wavering attitude 
of our leading European statesmen. I heard 
other Americans insinuate that there was a good 
deal of demagogy in his advocacy of the cause 
of the "Great Unwashed." This is altogether 
incomprehensible to Europeans, to whom Mr. 
Wilson's poHcy appears as a model of uncom- 
promising idealism and almost scientific probity, 
when we compare it even with that of the best 
among the leaders of om* lawyer-ridden govern- 
ments. Others again contemptuously called him 
a professor who is fitter to teach and argue than 
to act and govern. Not so does he appear to 
Europeans, who — rightly or wrongly — identify 
the thorough-going intervention of America in 
the war with the farsighted practical ability of 
the President. But even though he were noth- 
ing but a herald of ideas and principles, leaving 
others to do the acting for him, he would still 
appear to democratic Europe as the man who 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 221 

gave the lead in a world's crisis when all our own 
statesmen were muddhng in hopeless confusion, 
reduced, even in their advocacy of ideal war-aims, 
to expedients so obviously opportunist and so 
frequently in contradiction with reality that 
everybody ceased to believe in such men's sincer- 
ity and even in their capacity to think beyond 
the needs of the moment. The old Continent 
needed the leadership of a man who, even though 
he should be no more than an exponent of ideas, 
would give the straggling and dispirited forces 
of European democracy unity and certamty of 
purpose. This alone could transform the war 
from a blind desperate struggling for uncertam 
aims and under discredited leaders, into a su- 
preme fight for the maintenance of political 
democracy and the universal application of na- 
tional self-government. 

Only those who know— and very few people 
seem to reahse it even now— in what a hopeless, 
state of moral confusion Western Europe was 
floundering until the first months of 1917, can 
understand how the democratic forces of Europe, 
who alone had still the latent strength to bring 
about a decision, were inspirited by the voice that 
caUed from across the Atlantic. The material 
resources of the Entente powers were so immeas- 
urably greater than those of Germany and her 
alhes, that the war would have been won before 
1917, if it had merely been a matter of man- 



222 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

power, natural wealth and material equipment. 
The obvious lack of unity and far-sightedness in 
the strategy of the Entente powers, as contrasted 
with that which autocratic control and an iron 
militarism gave their opponents, was due, how- 
ever, to something far more vital than mere geo- 
graphical reasons or the supposed inabihty or 
treachery of leaders. It was the expression of 
the lack of moral unity that prevailed until the 
downfall of Russian Czardom and the assump- 
tion of the leadership of universal democracy by 
President Wilson. 

Democracy and labour in Western Europe 
were already fighting, it is true, for the main- 
tenance of national institutions more democratic 
than those of Germany ; but to do this, they had 
to yield up all real power to elements of whom 
the bulk had always been the deadhest foes of 
democracy and political freedom, and the most 
dangerous advocates of autocracy, militarism and 
imperialism, in their own countries. Govern- 
ments were claiming that they were fighting for 
justice, freedom, and the emancipation of op- 
pressed nationalities; yet at the same time they 
were intriguing behind the scenes to prepare a 
partition of the spoils of victory which would 
have been an outrage to these very principles. 
Many of the elements who advocated a war of 
destruction proved to be financially interested in 
its duration in the same way as the Krupps and 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 223 

Skodas who pursued a similar policy on the other 
side. With some of these so-called enemies they 
continued to have joint interests. Other im- 
perialistic elements, who had had their share of 
responsibihty in bringing about* the conditions 
that made the war possible, were trying almost 
openly, whilst still exciting the masses against 
Germany with the help of democratic slogans, to 
come to terms with her rulers in a way that would 
have cemented a Holy Alliance of European im- 
perialism and reaction against the world's de- 
mocracy. In short, European democracy was 
demoralised and reduced to impotence by mutual 
distrust and by the lack of a power to lead it 
whose motives would be more above suspicion 
than those of any European Government. If I 
have dwelt so extensively on my own doubts and 
hesitations during the first two and a half years 
of the war, it is merely because they give an 
image of the state of mind of most lovers of de- 
mocracy in Europe at that time, to whom the 
general uncertitude and confusion of aims of the 
Entente Powers left no other resource but to 
cling to the theory of the lesser evil and to the 
idea of a defensive war for the maintenance of 
their home institutions. 

This is why I had but two days of real happi- 
ness at the front. The first was that February 
day when I read President Wilson's address, 
formulating a constructive programme to the end 



224 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

that from this war should arise universal democ- 
racy and the independence of nations. A lump 
came into my throat at the idea that henceforth 
I need no longer fear I was going to die for a 
miserable delusion. 

Then, a few weeks later, in the trenches before 
Dixmude, I learned that the first great step 
towards this goal had been made in Russia, and 
that from then on there was a clear-cut issue be- 
tween the last remaining autocratic powers in 
Central Europe, and, arrayed against them, all 
the self-governing nations of the world. 

The Russian Revolution relieved me from a 
real nightmare. My hatred of Czardom was so 
intense that in the beginning, when the end of the 
war still appeared as a purely military proposi- 
tion for the mere estabhshment of a new equilib- 
rium between the European powers, I could not 
think of any better outcome than a defeat of Ger- 
many in the West, and a victory over Russia in 
the East — a double defeat of Central and East- 
ern European reaction, which I thought would 
ultimately result in the downfall of both Czar- 
dom and Kaiserism. Later on, as the deeper 
political significance of the war issues became 
clear, I had to take refuge in a theory that made 
a virtue of necessity by considering Czardom as 
under the circmnstances the lesser of the two 
evils. Like Plekhanoff and many other Russian 
socialists who had declared themselves in favour 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 225 

of Russia's war of national defence, I believed 
that this war would achieve the work of internal 
reformation that had been begun by the war with 
Japan, and that Czardom would not survive it. 
Czardom seemed to me as incompatible with Rus- 
sia's war as Kaiserism was essential to Germany's 
war. 

For Kaiserism was not by any means a mere 
survival from mediaeval times. The Hapsburgs, 
not the Hohenzollerns, were the heirs to the old 
German Emperors whose zenith of real power is 
sei^arated from the ascent of the Hohenzollerns 
to imperial significance by a gap of two centuries. 
German Kaiserism would have been infinitely 
less dangerous and less powerful if, like the 
Hapsburg and Romanoff dynasties, all its roots 
had been in the past. On the contrary, it was an 
essentially modern form of despotism. It de- 
rived its strength from the violence of class an- 
tagonism in a country of advanced and rapid 
capitaHst development, where the bourgeoisie had 
been too busy getting rich quickly to gather en- 
ergy for a democratic revolution, and therefore 
found it convenient to leave the political power 
in the hands of the classes that had ruled the 
country, when it was still in the agricultural 
stage: the Junkers and the mihtary caste. The 
Kaiser was merely a figure-head. Kaiserism 
itself was a symbol borrowed from mediseval tra- 
dition, of autocratic and militarised capitalism. 



226 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

Czardom, on the contrary, was nothing but a 
survival of old semi- Asiatic despotism, and as 
capitaHst industry began to modernise Russia, it 
appeared more and more as a system rotten to 
the core, that becomes unbearable to all classes. 
A war of the whole Russian nation, that necessi- 
tated a mighty effort of organisation and a gal- 
vanisation of national energy, was bound to 
smash to pieces the strait- j acket into which Czar- 
dom had clasped a great people. 

This expectation had come true at last. I had 
no longer to fear I might be giving my life for 
the Czar whilst believing that it was for democ- 
racy and freedom. 

A few weeks later, about the middle of April, 
I was unexpectedly ordered away from the front 
to report at Ste. Adresse, the seat of the Belgian 
Government in exile. There I was asked if I 
would accompany my friends, Emile Vander- 
velde, then a member of the Belgian Cabinet, 
and Louis de Brouckere, on a journey to Russia. 
We were to get in touch with the Kerensky 
government as representatives of Belgian labour. 
Aside from our diplomatic mission, which, of 
course, aimed at the prevention of a separate 
peace between Russia and the Central Powers, I 
was to visit the Russian front and get an idea of 
the military situation and the prospects of the 
planned summer offensive. We left immedi- 
ately ; stayed a while in Petrograd, where we met 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 227 

Arthur Henderson and Albert Thomas, who 
were there on a similar mission for Great Britain 
and France; visited Moscow, Kieff and a few 
other cities, and the front from Northern Gahcia 
to the Black Sea. We retm-ned in July after 
having paid a visit to Roumania, at the request 
of the Bratiano Government and as guests of the 
King. 

From the thousand impressions of this event- 
ful and tremendously interesting journey I will 
but note a few that have had a lasting influence 
on my mind and still retain some importance 
for the judgment of the present and future sit- 
uation. 

I never realised the full importance of a radi- 
cal reform of our diplomatic methods, culminat- 
ing in absolute subordination of the professional 
diplomats, as mere technical instruments of the 
democratic governments acting openly and un- 
der the control of public opinion, until this jour- 
ney allowed me to peep behind the scenes of the 
diplomatic world. I am still amazed at the 
amount of gross inefficiency, childish conceit and 
criminal irresponsibility that characterise profes- 
sional diplomacy and seem to be so inherent to 
the system that not even the best men or the most 
democratic countries escape their contagion. It 
put me into the habit of quoting to myself the 
words of Oxenstierna to his son: "You do not 
suspect, my son, with how httle sense this world 



228 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

is being ruled." Sometimes it merely filled me 
with amusement, as if I were seeing Abel Her- 
mant's novel, "La Carriere" enacted — a satire 
which I had always thought exaggerated, but the 
truth of which I then realised, and which I re- 
read later with intense pleasure. But there were 
other times when I thought of the hell I had just 
left, and of Europe's youth being sacrificed by 
millions ; and then I could have yelled with rage. 
From what I have seen of diplomacy in the very 
midst of this war, I can merely say that there 
can be no lasting benefit unless this cancer of 
professional and secret diplomacy be cut out. 
In this respect, also, there is somewhat of Kaiser- 
ism to be extirpated in every country. 

Judging by what I saw for myself on the spot, 
I do not hesitate to say that we owe the failure of 
the European Entente to make the free Russian 
nation an ally at least as faithful and powerful 
as Russian Czardom had been in the first place 
to the inefficiency and lack of understanding of 
their diplomacy. 

It is largely due to the inability of the majority 
of the diplomats who had been accredited to the 
Czar to understand the meaning of the revolu- 
tion and to adapt themselves in spirit to the new 
circumstances that such a false impression still 
prevails in Western Europe about the earlier 
stages of democratic government in Russia and 
the prospect it offered of a rapid, victorious end- 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 229 

ing to the war. Many people seem to have for- 
gotten altogether that Bolshevikism did not get 
into power until eight months after the downfall 
of Czardom, and that it was of practically no ac- 
count until the failure of the July offensive had 
inflicted a deadly blow on the Kerensky govern- 
ment. By confusing the Russian Revolution 
with Bolshevikism, they forget that the treachery 
and incapacity of the Czarist system of conduct- 
ing the war was one of the main causes of that 
system's overthrow. They overlook the fact that 
the original programme of the Revolution was a 
war for the defence of the newly conquered pop- 
ular freedom against the Central Powers, and 
for democratic aims practically identical with 
those formulated by President Wilson. They 
also overlook the fact that the Kerensky govern- 
ment made a greater economic and military effort 
to carry this war to a successful conclusion than 
the Czar had ever attempted. And I for one am 
convinced that with a little more understanding 
and support on the part of the Entente, this 
effort would have succeeded, struck German mili- 
tarism a death-blow and spared Russia the ordeal 
of anarchy and Bolshevikism. 

Few men in history have been so misjudged 
as Kerensky. I consider the popular belief that 
he lacked energy as the exact opposite of the 
truth. The very fact that this man was suffer- 
ing from tuberculosis to the extent that he had 



230 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

had a kidney removed and had practically lost 
the use of an arm — that this man, to whom after 
he had assmned power the doctors had given only 
a few weeks more to live, was yet able to carry 
on a gigantic day-and-night task for months by 
sheer nervous strength, is already a strong pre- 
sumption to the contrary. I have been witness 
to Kerensky's almost superhuman efforts; his 
ubiquity and sleepless activity made one think of 
Napoleon at the height of his working capacity. 
I can still see him sitting at meetings, which 
started after midnight and lasted until the morn- 
ing hours, with a deathly pallor on his face, clos- 
ing his reddened eyes for a few seconds' torpor 
whenever he was not directly concerned in the 
discussion, but wide awake the next minute to 
take part in it again. Indeed, his will-power 
was the only secret of his popularity. I would 
not call him extraordinarily intelligent; there 
were other members of his government, Tsere- 
telli, for instance, whose brain power was prob- 
ably much superior to his. Nor could his elo- 
quence account for his power over the masses. 
He had none of that artistic versatility of elocu- 
tion that appeals so much to the Russian mind. 
His voice was strong, but somewhat hoarse and 
guttural, and he spoke in short, matter-of-fact, 
energetic sentences, in a manner more soldierhke 
than sentimental. The remarkable way in which 
he nevertheless electrified the masses whenever 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 231 

he appeared— even when he only expressed him- 
self through his deportment or his gestures — can 
only be explained by the fascination of his will- 
power. This is an exceptional thing to find in 
Russia, where constructive and consistent energy 
is a rare attribute amongst men, and where the 
crowds are as receptive to the influence of a mani- 
fest strong will as some weak women are to virile 
energy. 

It is true that this will might have been ill- 
directed or weakened in its effect by intellectual 
hesitation or sentimentality. Yet, I do not be- 
lieve that even this was the case. Kerensky 
seemed to me to pursue with remarkable consist- 
ency and ruthlessness from the beginning until 
the very end a quite definite aim, to win for his 
government the support of all classes in Russia, 
from the peasants to the capitalists, that had a 
common interest in seeing a republican form of 
national self-government established and consol- 
idated. The means by which he meant to reach 
this end were obvious enough. They were the 
same as those of the young American repubhc 
after the Declaration of Independence, of the 
French Convention on the eve of the first in- 
vasion : a holy war for the defense of democracy 
against an enemy despot. 

The difficulties inherent in the general condi- 
tion of Russia were, it is true, enormous. The 
very disorganisation of the country, which had 



232 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

caused the downfall of the ancien regime that 
was responsible for it, put an extremely heavy 
task on the shoulders of the popular power that 
had taken its place. Certain aspects of the prob- 
lem of national reorganisation even seemed to be 
altogether incapable of solution within the short 
period of time required by the circumstances. Of 
such, was the insufficiency of the railroad system, 
and means of transportation generally for the 
continued maintenance of two million soldiers, 
along a stabilised front from the Baltic to the 
Black Sea. But this was all the more reason, as 
Kerensky realised perfectly well, to aim at a 
quick military decision. 

There was another reason, which was the state 
of mind of the soldiers themselves. The imme- 
diate effect of the revolution had been a sudden 
loosening of the traditional ultra-Prussianised 
discipline and the spreading of the illusion that 
an international revolution was bound to follow 
and put a prompt end to the war, so that the 
soldiers might go home to their villages and take 
their part of the land. 

Kerensky has been accused of encouraging mil- 
itary insubordination by his lenient attitude and 
by accepting the famous Prikase No. 1 of the 
Soviet government, that established the Soviet 
system as a regular part of mihtary organisation. 
I am convinced, however, that he chose the only 
way that could lead to the reestablishment of dis- 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 233 

cipline on democratic principles. He was as 
strict a disciplinarian as any general of the old 
regime, but he was wise enough to realise that 
persuasion and propaganda would do more than 
cruel repression to stop mass desertion and fra- 
ternisation with the enemy. He knew, more- 
over, how to be severe when severity was re- 
quired. As to the Sovietising of the army, it 
undoubtedly led in the beginning to some very 
disagreeable consequences; but the native com- 
mon sense of the Russian soldiers soon restored 
the activity of the military Soviets to normal 
limits, within which they performed very useful 
functions as organs of democratic control over 
the interior administration of mihtary units and 
of propaganda amongst the soldiers. Even the 
suppression when off duty of compulsory salut- 
ing, which has been the object of quite extreme 
criticism, had no bad effect on discipline. 

It is thanks to this wise policy that Kerensky, 
after less than three months devoted to tireless 
propaganda, had succeeded in making the war 
popular with a great majority of the Russian 
people and in creating psychological and mili- 
tary conditions more favourable to a large scale 
offensive than any that existed before. 

He realised the truth of G. B. Shaw's dictum: 
"If the Russian Revolution is to be saved from 
reaction and the Russian Repubhc from disrup- 
tion by the discontent of the working class and 



234 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

the diversity of the ideals of its own reformers, 
the revolutionary Government must fortify itself 
by a war, precisely as the French revolutionary 
government had to do. If there were no war, 
it would have to make one." 

For all that, not much less than a miracle was 
required to make Russia victorious. But then 
this is the sort of miracle that is often brought 
about by revolutions, which by sheer force of 
popular enthusiasm magnify beyond all normal 
measure the power of a nation. After all, the 
situation of Russia in June, 1917, was much less 
hopeless than that of France seemed to be in 
1792. Kerensky knew this and believed the mir- 
acle would happen. 

He did not rely on popular enthusiasm alone. 
I have satisfied myself of the truth of his asser- 
tion, corroborated by the Commander-in-Chief 
Alexeieff and his successor Brussiloff, that never 
before had the Russian army disposed of such 
reserves of men at the front, of such satisfactory 
supplies, and of such an amount of artillery and 
ammunition. I took some trouble to survey the 
situation on the spot, not only by heart-to-heart 
talks with the general staff of the armies and 
army corps that were to take part in the July 
offensive, and by visits to the trenches, but also 
by flying over the whole front of the off enjsive, 
with a Russian pilot, at an altitude (less than 
3000 feet) that allowed me to form a quite defi- 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 235 

nite idea of the Russian, German, Austrian, and 
Turkish positions. My conclusion was that the 
odds, tactically speaking, were in favour of the 
success of the Russian offensive. The numeri- 
cal strength of the Russian armies at the front 
was at least twice that of their opponents. The 
Russian field artillery was notably superior, with 
a reserve of about 20 million rounds, resulting 
from the long previous spell of inactivity ; heavy 
artillery and trench mortars were about bal- 
anced. 

As to the morale and fighting determination of 
the troops in the sectors of the offensive, it was 
better than ever before the revolution, according 
even to observers who were anything but prone 
to view the revolutionary changes in the army 
with, sympathy. Besides, the Austrians, who 
formed the bulk of the forces that were to bear 
the brunt of the attack, were hardly any better 
off than the Russians from the viewpoint of gen- 
eral organisation and morale. I also beheve that 
if the offensive in Galicia, Bukowina and Rou- 
mania had succeeded, it would, in view of the 
lack of enemy reserves behind the Eastern front 
and the precarious position of the Germans and 
Austrians in the West, have had consequences 
reaching far beyond the significance of a local 
withdrawal. 

Why then did it fail, and after some local suc- 
cesses and the swift forward sweep of Korniloff 's 



236 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

army in the centre suddenly result in a rout and 
panic, with German companies chasing fleeing 
Russian divisions before them over scores of 
miles ? 

A glance at the order of battle on the map of 
operations clearly tells the cause. Whilst the 
armies that launched the attack, after having 
been morally prepared by Kerensky's propa- 
ganda, fought heroically for ten days with a 
success varying according to the amount of 
resistance encountered ; a weak German counter- 
offensive against the forces on the wings that 
remained passive put the latter to flight without 
fighting. Thus the Germans had staked their 
all in running the risk of having their feeble 
counter-attacking force annihilated whilst en- 
deavouring to take advantage of the weakness 
inherent to the precarious Russian undertaking. 
For Kerensky's policy had been, in view of the 
short time allowed for a gigantic work of moral 
preparation, to concentrate all his efforts on those 
armies that were going to attack. He relied on 
their success to carry with them the others 
(amongst whom the Bolshevik defeatist propa- 
ganda had gone on unchecked) by sheer force of 
example and the prestige of victory. The psy- 
chology of the Russian crowd is, like that of 
all ignorant masses, essentially impulsive and 
changeable. The psychological equilibrium was 
as unstable with the attacking armies, where 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 237 

a high pitch of warlike enthusiasm had been 
reached after a few weeks of intense propaganda, 
as with the armies on the wings, where prolonged 
inactivity and forced neglect had created a fa- 
vourable recruiting ground for Bolshevikism. 
Once the latter yielded to the pressure of incom- 
parably weaker but reckless enemy forces, those 
of the former who had paid the dearest price for 
their advance were seized by the contagion of 
panic, and the ordered strategic withdrawal of 
the others soon also degenerated into a rout. 
The very conditions that were to make victory 
avalanche-like gave an avalanche impetus to 
defeat. 

From then on, Kerensky was doomed, and 
Bolshevikism, the only force that promised bread 
and peace to a nation exhausted by a disastrous 
war, the international issues of which it could not 
understand, was bound to get into power. Most 
of Kerensky's critics base their charges of weak- 
ness and inconsistency on his attitude between the 
July disaster and the Bolshevik revolution in 
November, and especially on his final refusal to 
collaborate with Korniloff and Savinkoff to es- 
tablish a military dictatorship. I think, on the 
contrary, that Kerensky put up as gallant a 
fight as he could against overwhelmingly adverse 
circumstances and that it does his political hon- 
esty credit not to have yielded to the temptation 
to reestablish by military violence a waning 



238 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

power that had ceased to have the support of the 
majority of the people. 

I remain unshakably convinced, from my 
knowledge of the objective conditions of the July 
offensive, that events at that time might have 
taken an opposite turn if a little more pro-war 
propaganda had then been made to check the in- 
fluence of Bolshe\ikism at its beginning. This 
would have been possible if Kerensky had been 
better supported by his Western allies in his en- 
deavour to preach a holy war for democracy and 
freedom. But, thanks largely to the stupidity 
of diplomacy and the inadequacy of press in- 
formation, he was met with mistrust. The pub- 
lication of the secret treaties and a frank common 
statement of democratic, non-imperiahstic war 
aims by the Entente Powers would have put 
Kerensky in a position to crush Bolshe\'ikism 
more effectively than any terrorist dictatorship 
could have done. But the Russian Government 
tried in vain to get this collaboration. 

At a particularly critical juncture, when it was 
urgently necessary to oppose the plan of the 
Stockholm international conference that could 
only result in a negotiated German peace, and 
which was used by the Bolshe%4k propagandists 
at the Russian front as an argument to prove 
the uselessness of an offensive, Lloyd George 
suddenly changed his attitude and by under- 
hand methods encouraged this unfortunate pro- 



I 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 239 

posal. Arthur Henderson was to act as an in- 
strument in this intrigue. He was loyal enough 
to leave the War Cabinet later on, on account 
of his advocacy of the Stockholm Conference, 
without saying that Lloyd George himself had 
instructed him in June, 1917, when he acted 
as a temporary British ambassador in Petro- 
grad, to favor this conference. He did not 
make the facts of the case pubhc until after 
the war was over. This is one of the darkest 
periods in the history of European secret diplo- 
macy, for whilst there was a magnificent chance 
to make democratic Russia a decisive asset in a 
final onslaught on the Central Powers, it was 
spoilt by the lack of diplomatic and military co- 
ordination. 

The intrigues of Entente statesmen were 
largely responsible for this. Their want of 
confidence in universal democracy induced them 
secretly to favour a peace by negotiation whilst 
openly talking of crushing the foe. Europe has 
paid dearly for their mistake: they w^ould not 
trust Russian democracy ; they were faced instead 
with Russian anarchy. 

During that period full of magnificent hope 
and enthusiasm that made one think of the young 
French nation before Valmy, Bolshevikism was 
of very little account. It was confined to a small 
but energetic group, mostly composed of politi- 
cal exiles recently returned from Siberia or 



240 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

Western Europe, whose influence over a section 
of the working classes in the great cities and of 
the soldiers was, characteristically enough, on the 
dechne during the few weeks that preceded the 
July offensive. The chances that they would 
ever get into power seemed at that time ridic- 
ulously small. What struck me most was the 
fundamental difference, nay, the contrast be- 
tween the frame of mind of their leaders and that 
of the mass of the Russian people. 

The Russian crowds with whom I came into 
contact — together with Vandervelde and de 
Brouckere, I have talked to a total of about 
96,000 people at 38 pubhc meetings, both at the 
front and in the rear — struck me as being of a 
charming disposition. Unless my impression 
was very much mistaken, the average Russian, 
and especially the peasant, seemed to be a sweet- 
tempered individual, unenergetic, contemplative 
and sentimental, but with a solid foundation of 
plain, almost childish enthusiasm. Withal a very 
unmilitary race, to whom the idea of killing is as 
adverse as that of being killed. With the excep- 
tion of a few nomad warrior tribes, it required 
the foreign influence of an imported mihtary dis- 
cipline to turn such material into soldiers. 

What struck me, above all, was their tolerance 
and their sheephke indifference to everything that 
did not concern them immediately and personally 
— apart from some sudden waves of temporary 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 241 

mystic enthusiasm. I have seen meetings ter- 
minate in a spirit of charming mutual courtesy 
that with one-tenth of the explosive power latent 
therein would in any other country have resulted 
in most abominable disorder. In short, the life 
in peasant communities which has given the na- 
tional psychology its peculiar stamp seems to 
have developed, in spite of the lack of national 
self-government, a very strong instinct of soli- 
darity, mutual tolerance, and, as they say them- 
selves, "all-human" sympathy. After I had 
seen Russia, I could understand the peculiar na- 
tional quality of Prince Kropotkine's Utopia of 
a free discipline based on mutual help without 
authority, and I also understood how this advo- 
cate of arcadian anarchism had been turned by 
the war into an energetic patriot. 
f The yeast that was to make this dough rise was 
of quite a different quality. They were intel- 
lectuals and semi-intellectuals, most of them 
Jews, Letts, Georgians, and other members of 
oppressed nationalities, who had been imprisoned 
or exiled from their native country in their youth. 
The majority of them had lived in other Euro- 
pean countries, where they had formed small mi- 
gratory colonies that refused to assimilate, or 
even to come into contact, with the national life 
of those countries. They were all socialists, of 
course, but their socialist activity was purely 
academic and literary. Unable as they were to 



242 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

do anything in the labour movement either of 
their native country or of their land of adoption, 
they had to confine themselves to theorising. 
Their main activity consisted in meeting from 
night till morning in small groups around a 
friendly samovar, in smoking an endless number 
of cigarettes, and in vehement discussion of ab- 
stract theories. All of which was to start again 
the next evening, with a fresh supply of tea, of 
cigarettes, and — at somewhat larger intervals — 
of up-to-date doctrines. No wonder that their 
temper became bitter and intolerant. They were 
pickled in the vinegar of exile. The result was 
that Russian sociaHsm appeared as a kaleido- 
scope of an endless number of so-called parties, 
factions, fractions of factions, sects, tendencies, 
and sub-tendencies, all equally eager to claim the 
monopoly of having discovered the only adequate 
method of pseudo-Marxian hair-spHtting that 
could save the proletariat. 

When the revolution gave these unhappy vic- 
tims of Czarist oppression an opportunity to re- 
turn to their native land, which many of them, 
like Lenine, had not seen since they were less 
than twenty, they had developed pecuharities of 
mind that made them the exact psychological op- 
posite of the masses of whom they were to assume 
the lead. 

There is no better proof, by the way, of the 
pathetic inability of any system of govern- 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 243 

ment other than democracy to develop the intel- 
lectual and administrative capacities of mind re- 
quired by progressive leadership. On the other 
hand, any undemocratic poHcy that tries to keep 
the labour movement and intellectual progress 
out of their natural channels of experimental ac- 
tion is bound to result in Bolshevikism, viz., in 
despotism from below as the answer to despotism 
from above. 

This state of things helped me to understand 
the doctrinal aspect of Bolshevikism. Practi- 
cally, it was nothing but the response of the 
hungry war-weary masses to the call for support 
of the only people who could at least promise 
them a way out of their misery. Theoretically, 
it was an attempt to adapt artificially to Russian 
conditions, aggravated by miUtary and economic 
disorganisation, an abstract doctrine conceived in 
exile and distilled from social conceptions corre- 
sponding to a stage of economic and political 
development existing abroad but as different 
from that of Russia as is a hydraulic-press from 
a sledge hammer in a village smithy. 

The Bolsheviks made a virtue of necessity and 
called their unorganised mob-rule, helped by dis- 
banded soldiers with their machine-guns, the dic- 
tatorship of the proletariat. This dogma they 
had borrowed from the arsenal of the German 
Social-Democrats, to whom the very spirit of de- 
mocracy was so foreign that they could not con- 



244 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

ceive the emancipation of labour except as a kind 
of military victory of one class over another, re- 
placing the despotism of capital by the despotism 
of labour. In a sense this really corresponded 
to the situation in Germany, where indeed the 
high tension of class antagonism, resulting fhom 
the swift development of capitalism, combined 
with the permeation of all institutions with the 
spirit of militarism, and the lack of political free- 
dom, made a proletarian dictatorship a proba- 
bihty. 

In Russia, however, this term became a 
mockery. The industrial proletariat, that in 
Germany, England or Belgium means the ma- 
jority of the nation, in Russia never formed more 
than five per cent of the population. During 
the war, it hardly existed at all, for the majority 
of the workers of the big factories and mines 
were in the army — mostly with the artillery and 
the engineers — and had been replaced by a mot- 
ley crowd mostly of young peasants and peasant 
girls fresh from the country, and by casual work- 
ers. The Soviet movement that was to be the 
instrument of the proletarian dictatorship had so 
little to do with normal industrial democracy that 
it totally ignored the labour unions, which had 
reached a certain significance since 1905. 

I have made some Russian socialists entertain 
mild doubts about my sanity of mind by telling 
them that I thought they ought to replace their 



THE LAND OF DESPOTISM 245 

cry of "Down with capitalism!" by ^'Hurrah for 
capitalism 1" There was nothing more pathetic 
than to see a Petrograd crowd of unemployed 
workers, still half-dressed as peasants, and of de- 
serters from the army, walking through the filthy 
streets, past the idle factories and the empty 
shops, with the ominous "Down with capitalism" 
on their banners. If their leaders had learned 
anything from Western Europe, they ought to 
have realised that capitalism is a nccej^sary stage 
of industrial development, without which human 
productivity could not have reached the level 
that can alone make possible any improvement of 
the workers' standard of hving, to say nothing of 
their emancipation as a class. The Bolsheviks 
reminded me of the man up a tree, busily en- 
gaged in sawing off the branch that supports 
him. 

The failure of Russian Bolshevikism to achieve 
anything but disorganisation and demoralisation 
again convinced me of the truth which the col- 
lapse of German social-democracy had already 
taught, namely, that no sound labour movement, 
no socialism is possible without a minimum of 
political democracy — that minimum for the 
maintenance of which we were fighting. 'No so- 
cialist state would be worth living in unless im- 
bued with the spirit of political freedom, demo- 
cratic government and efficient administration 
that cannot arise unless this minimum be at- 



246 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

tained. A nation that has never enjoyed free- 
dom cannot understand how much it means to 
those who have it, and who have it because they 
have conquered it themselves. 



X 



IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM 

Have the elder races halted? 
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond 

the seas? 
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, 
Pioneers! — Pioneers! 

Walt Whitman, Pioneers! Pioneers! 

What the lesson of Germany and Russia had 
begun to bring home to me in a negative way, 
my visit to the United States in 1918 succeeded 
in teaching me positively. 

After another spell at the front, the Belgian 
Government sent me abroad again, in April, 
1918. This time I was to go to the United 
States as labour expert with a mission that was to 
study, with a view to the reconstruction of Bel- 
gium after the war, the American methods of 
labour management in industry. After this mis- 
sion was completed, I stayed another few weeks 
to do some experimental work for the American 
army, under orders from the Director of Bel- 
gian trench artillery. My six months' stay gave 
me a unique opportunity of getting into touch 
with all classes of people, in 36 different States ; 
and, needless to say, I learned more things — or 

247 



248 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

at least, I imagine I did — than are directly 
concerned with scientific shop -management or 
trench-mortar experiments. 

I came to America with great expectations, 
combined with a certain uneasiness lest they 
should be disappointed. 

I knew no more about the United States than 
what I had learned out of books in my study of 
history and literature. I felt a great curosity to 
verify what Viscount Bryce and De Tocqueville 
had written in their studies on American democ- 
racy, and to find out whether there was anything 
left of the spirit that had animated Whitman's 
^'Leaves of Grass." 

I will confess also, although it may seem 
puerile enough, I was greatly looking forward 
to seeing the land and the people immortahsed 
by — Mark Twain. When I first saw the Missis- 
sippi, which still seemed to me haunted by the 
ghosts of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer (those 
heroes of my boyhood!), it gave me a thrill of 
emotion almost as intense as when I took off my 
hat to the Statue of Liberty on entering New 
York harbour. I am sure this will sound very 
irreverent to those Americans who, unlike myself 
and many Europeans, consider Mark Twain as 
an entertainer and nothing more. Perhaps one 
must be a foreigner to feel the pulse of America 
beating through that himiorous philosophy of his. 

Above all, to turn to weightier matter, I 



IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM 249 

wanted to make sure whether President Wilson 
was voicing the personal desires of a dreamer or 
the conscious will of his nation. 

It is in this last respect that my expectations 
were subject to some uneasiness. My mind was 
still somewhat prejudiced by what I had learnt 
on the subject of America from the literature of 
German social-democracy and of the American 
Socialist Party. They taught us that American 
democracy was a mere blind to the most ruthless 
form of capitalist exploitation of the workers, a 
blind of the "dollar-kings" to justify this exploi- 
tation by the figment, achieved through dema- 
gogy and corruption, of its victim's consent. 

I had plenty of good reasons not to beheve all 
this. The main one was that America had obvi- 
ously entered the war under the influence of 
causes of a higher order than the interests of her 
capitaHsts. Her President, elected by popular 
vote, had advocated war-aims inspired by a much 
broader vision of the happiness of mankind and 
by a much truer love of democracy than those of 
any European statesman. Yet there remained 
these anxious questions: Did President Wilson's 
ideals really correspond to the spirit pervading 
the American people? Was there not the same 
difference as in European countries between the 
disinterested war-motives proclaimed openly and 
the secret, sordid ambitions of influential minori- 
ties behind the scenes? 



250 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

I hasten to say that my anxiety was thoroughly 
dispelled by what I saw on the spot, and that 
America has strengthened my belief in the value 
of democracy more than anything else could have 
done. I fell in love with her, and this love is all 
the stronger for not being blind to certain flaws 
and imperfections. 

My greatest surprise was to find that America 
was not the community of dollar-worshippers 
that many European critics would make us be- 
lieve. On the contrary, my decided impression 
was that in no other country does mere material 
wealth carry with it less prestige, in no other 
country is it less considered as being the one aim 
in life. One finds there, of course, the intense 
struggle for life inherent to the progressive 
movement of a highly industrialised and capital- 
ist method of production, which invariably makes 
money the standard of success. But so it is in 
all European countries. In America, however, 
money-making is, as a rule, considered as a means 
to an end, and not, like in most old countries, as 
an end in itself. The very word rentier — the 
retired man of business who starts as early as 
possible to live on his generally very moderate 
savings in idleness and mediocrity — is unknown 
in the American vocabulary. There are loafers, 
sure enough, but they don't advertise it, and their 
ideal is not popular, as it is in France or Belgium, 
where the universal desire to become a petty 



IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM 251 

rentier is a real curse to economic progress. 
Rich people in America mostly work hard (too 
hard, even) and quite a few of them are as busy- 
in spending money for purposes other than their 
own as in earning it. The best thing for a rich 
American to do if he wants to stop working and 
spend his fortune in idleness, is to go to Europe. 
He will not be out of place there, whilst if he 
stays in America he will be pointed at by his own 
people. 

The very prodigality with which most Ameri- 
cans spend their money, as compared with the 
financial conservatism of thrift-ridden Europe, 
is evidence that they attach less importance to its 
mere possession. Again, the dowry system, that 
makes marriage amongst the wealthy classes of 
continental Europe almost synonymous with 
legalised prostitution,* is unknown in the States 
and would doubtless be considered as a gross in- 
sult to the dignity of both men and women. 

Even making a liberal allowance for the tem- 
porary effect of war enthusiasm, the way in 
which America fostered the spirit of sacrifice to 
the needs of the community seemed to me to 
demonstrate a higher level of public morality and 
social conscience than anything to be found on 
the European continent. I except England, 
where the public spirit much more resembles that 
of America. I will merely compare the attitude 
of the upper and middle-class Americans with 



252 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

that of the similar classes in France and Belgium, 
who I had ample opportunity of observing dur- 
ing the war. There is no need for me to em- 
phasise here how incomparably larger was the 
total amount of human lives and of material 
wealth destroyed by the war in these countries 
than it was in America. Yet the general atti- 
tude of the wealthy and comfortable European 
classes was a stubborn resistance to any lowering 
of their standard of living, even though justified 
by the common interest of the nation. The re- 
strictions on food and fuel consumption imposed 
by law were commonly considered as an annoy- 
ance that it was fair to evade whenever an oppor- 
tunity offered. In America, on the contrary, 
voluntary restriction was so generally accepted 
as a moral duty that in many cases it was carried 
to excess. 

Since my retvu-n to Belgium, I have met 
many honourable well-to-do people, who lost 
their sons and part of their property through the 
war, and who bravely faced imprisonment, de- 
portation or even execution for defying the Ger- 
mans during the occupation. But these same 
people had spent practically all the money they 
had managed to save in buying food-luxuries at 
exorbitant prices, rather than change their habits 
of eating and drinking well and plentifully. 
They paid five dollars for a pound of butter, 
thirty dollars for a cwt. of potatoes, and twenty- 



IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM 253 

five cents for an egg or a quart of milk, without 
ever thinking that their action cruelly deprived 
the poorer classes of their chance of getting 
things which were to them not a luxury but a 
. necessity. I told these epicureans about my 
American friends who had voluntarily sacri- 
ficed luxuries they might easily have paid for 
if they had wanted to; about the popular re- 
sponse to such appeals as were made for the 
*'gasoleneless Sundays" and for the financial 
support of the Red Cross and Soldiers' Welfare 
institutions. They thought I was telling them 
fairy tales. They certainly did not understand 
that the more purely democratic character of 
American institutions had resulted in a much 
acuter consciousness of national, nay even of 
human, soHdarity, and in an altogether higher 
standard of pubhc morality. 

My experience as a traveller has taught me 
that there are a few tests that can be made by a 
casual observer within a few hours' visit to any 
city or country, and which are a sure Judication of 
the prevailing level of pubhc morality. I ob- 
serve to what extent the birds in the parks and 
public squares are afraid of human beings; 
whether there are many silly or obscene inscrip- 
tions on walls, doors, etc.; whether a crowd of 
people is able to discipline itself when entering 
a street- or railroad-car and in occupying the 
space within; how many different "classes" there 



254 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

are on these, as an indication of the social cleav- 
ages in a nation ; whether the tip system is wide- 
spread or not, evidence as to the dignity with 
which human labour is treated ; whether there are 
many signboards in public places synonymous 
with the ominous German Verhoten! telling how 
far the people are left to their own honour to be- 
have themselves properly ; whether one sees much 
menial or heavy labour done by women and chil- 
dren; and whether the quantity of papers and 
offal lying about on park-lawns and similar places 
denotes a pubhc-spirited citizenship. 

The last of these tests is the only one in which 
I have not found the United States of America 
to beat the record of all countries I have visited; 
but then I am told that, especially in New York, 
the careless throwing about of papers is mostly 
due to the large percentage of non-assimilated 
immigrants. Whether this be so or not, I will 
gladly admit that this little defect may be ignored 
when the much more important testimony of 
some of the other experimental observations is 
considered. The first day I landed in America, 
I noticed that the birds and squirrels were tamer 
than anywhere else; that, in spite of the motto 
"step briskly and watch your step," the crowds 
were remarkably well discipHned. I found there 
was practically only one class on the railroads as 
contrasted with the characteristic German four 
class system; that tips were much less generally 



IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM 255 

expected than on the backshish-ridden Old Conti- 
nent; that very few things were officially Fer- 
botent except spitting (and I had no reason to 
regret this exception) ; that there was obviously 
a much greater respect for childhood and woman- 
hood than in Europe. In all my six months' 
journey through the States I only once noticed 
an obscene inscription on a wall, and then it was 
in the vernacular of a country of Latin Europe 
which the desire to avoid a rupture in the Entente 
forbids me to mention. 

Thus I fell in love with America, at first sight. 
This love was deepened by a six months' passion- 
ate intercourse with her spirit, as it spoke to me 
from her factories, her universities, her cities, her 
vast landscapes, her common people and her 
prominent citizens. It ripened into the resolve 
that, unless the outcome of the war should make 
my two little children citizens of the "United 
States of the World," I would give them a chance 
of becoming citizens of the United States of 
America. I am going to carry out this resolve 
now that the inability of the Old Continent to 
rise to the height of the new ideals seems to prove 
that the only country where life is worth living is 
the one that stands for — to quote Abraham Lin- 
coln — "That sentiment in the Declaration of In- 
dependence which gave liberty not alone to the 
people of this country, but hope to all the world, 
for all future time . . . which gave promise 



256 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

that in due time the weight should be taken from 
the shoulders of all men, and that all should have 
an equal chance." 

What, then, makes me love America is neither 
its natural beauty nor its huge wealth and indus- 
trial development. It is the idealism that per- 
meates its pubHc institutions, and the higher 
quality given to the life of its citizens by its faith 
in democracy, freedom, the sanctity of labour, 
the equality of opportunity it offers to all men. 

I do not think that America is really more 
beautiful than Europe ; its beauty is merely dif- 
ferent. Its scenery is less varied, and for all the 
impressiveness of its huge natural wonders and 
broad expanses, it lacks the subtlety of charm 
which a more intimate blending of nature with 
human life has given to European landscapes. 
America is still camping on her soil; Europe is at 
home on hers. Europe has the charm of her his- 
toric cities, the endless variety of her architecture, 
the quaintness of her patriarchal village life that 
for generation on generation has been identified 
with the peculiar atmosphere of local scenery. 
Nature itself witnesses almost everywhere to the 
impress of human hands in the fields, the hedges, 
the roadside trees, along the brooks and rivers, 
while, to those who yearn for "nature una- 
dorned," Europe can offer the solitude of Alpine 
heights, forests, moorlands, steppes and lonely 
shores, where one can meet Pan face to face as 



IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM 257 

easily as in the mountains or deserts of America. 

As to the immense natural wealth of the New 
Continent and the superior productivity of its 
industry, these are only a condition to a better 
and a happier life. In themselves hes no virtue. 
They would indeed be a curse were it true that 
they have made the nation worshippers of Mam- 
mon. But I know they have not. Thanks to 
democracy, superior wealth has not merely re- 
sulted, as many would have us believe, in an ab- 
normal accumulation of riches in the hands of a 
few monopohsts. On the contrary, it has raised 
the standard of living for all classes far above 
the European level. Thus, if it has not created 
civihsation in the higher sense of the term, it has 
at least made it possible for great masses of the 
people to enjoy it. And the latter are those who 
in Europe would be denied all access to the world 
of culture, harassed as they are by the ceaseless, 
sordid struggle for mere existence, deprived of 
even a minimum of comfort and leisure, shut off 
by class prejudices from all real share in public 
education. 

When all is said, I am not at all sure that 
America's superiority in natural resources is 
so indisputable, provided we take Europe as a 
whole, and not a particular European country, 
as a term of comparison. Those Europeans 
who, because they refuse to admit the backward- 
ness of their methods of production, argue that 



258 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

the higher standard of living of the American 
people is solely due to their greater natural re- 
sources, forget that these resources are divided 
over a territory as big as that of Europe. It is 
a much longer journey, for instance, from the 
Calif ornian oil-fields, the Montana metal mines, 
or the Pennsylvanian coal-pits, to New England, 
Chicago, or Detroit, than that required for Ga- 
lician oil, Scandinavian or Spanish ore, or coal 
from British, German, Belgian or French mines 
to reach any industrial plant located between the 
Atlantic Ocean, the Black Sea and the Mediter- 
ranean. Wheat has to travel no further on its 
way from Russia or Hungary to Antwerp, than 
it has in going from Kansas City to New York. 
My survey of industrial methods in America 
has convinced me that the chief reason of 
Europe's comparative poverty is to be sought 
elsewhere. It lies in the backwardness of meth- 
ods of production, which lack concentration, 
standardisation and scientific foresight and re- 
search. Coupled with this backwardness there 
is the strength of class prejudices, sanctified by 
traditions rooted in feudalism, that refuse to the 
labouring masses the benefit of hygienic condi- 
tions and of an education that would make them 
at the same time more useful citizens and more 
capable producers. Moreover, the intellectual 
inertia of the administrative and bureaucratic 
classes in Europe is incompatible with the effi- 



IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM 259 

ciency and alertness required by modern indus- 
trialism. Last, but not least, the Old Continent 
labours under the disadvantage of pohtical insti- 
tutions that were adapted to forms of economic 
life very different from the present ones, and of 
economic frontiers between countries which are 
really as interdependent as are the States of the 
American Union. Old Goethe had the right in- 
tuition of the cause of America's superiority 
when he said : 

"Amerika, du hast es besser 
Als unser continent, der Alte; 
Hast keine verfallenen Schlosser 
Und keine Basalte." 

The progress of American methods of produc- 
tion and of the political institutions correspond- 
ing to them has not been hampered as in Europe 
by the survivals which those "ruined castles" 
symbolise. I do not know whether absolute re- 
liance can be placed on the calculation made by 
Mr. Elhs Barker, who estimates that the average 
American working-man produces, within a given 
period of time, about two or three times as much 
as the British worker, largely because American 
industry utilises three horse-power engines to one 
horse-power in England. But there certainly is 
a very considerable difference between the pro- 
ductivity — i.e., between the output corresponding 
to a given human effort — of America and of 
Europe. 



260 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

Bolsheviks would probably retort that it 
merely proves America to be the most intensively 
capitalist of all countries. And from this they 
evidently conclude — according to their naive ar- 
gument which opposes the category sociahsm 
to the category capitahsm — that it is also the 
most degraded. But let any European social- 
ist, Bolshevik or not, candidly ask himself to 
what European socialism owes its pecuhar com- 
bativeness, and, to a large extent, its very exist- 
ence as a mass movement. Will he not confess 
that sociahsm owes what it has won rather to its 
opposition to survivals from the pre-capitahstic 
period, both in the institutions and in the public 
spirit, than to the essence of capitalism itself? I 
for one have my answer ready. In a country 
like America capitalism is "pure," by which I 
mean that it has developed in an atmosphere of 
national self-government, political freedom and 
equality of chances and rights. It is thus the 
"pure" political reflex of the spirit of competitive 
capitalist production. I believe that in such an 
atmosphere sociahsm can evolve gradually and 
experimentally from capitahsm by the mere play 
of the tendency to indefinite improvement in ef- 
ficiency which is inherent to the competitive sys- 
tem, and by the movement towards more and 
more political self-determination of the masses, 
which gives them the power to counteract the 
detrimental effects of monopohsation. 



IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM 261 

There is no clearer proof of this than the fail- 
ure of all attempts that have so far been made 
to acclimatise European socialism in America. 
Even if the anti-war attitude of the Socialist 
Party of America had not caused the majority 
of American-born socialists to leave the party, 
its traditional methods would never have ap- 
pealed to the American spirit, for they were 
European and not American. This party is in 
fact a federation of unassimilated immigrants 
trying to import ideas, which may correspond to 
the conditions in their native countries, but cer- 
tainly not to those that prevail in America. 

Whilst in the United States, I re-read Morris 
Hilquitt's history of American socialism. I 
think it as representative of that Sociahst Party's 
stubborn determination to ignore America as is 
its author of the cosmopolitan, un-American 
class that forms the bulk of its membership. It 
dwells extensively on the history and vicissitudes 
of the tiny colonies and sects created by emi- 
grants and exiles from Europe on what they con- 
sidered as the virgin soil of the New Continent. 
But there is not a word about American democ- 
racj^ just as though there were no difference at 
all between, say, Russian Czardom and the 
United States. 

I find more potential sociaHsm in the Decla- 
ration of Independence, in the speeches of Abra- 
ham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson, than in any 



262 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

of the so-called socialists' abortive attempts to 
raise cabbages by the same method as that of 
our ancestors at the time of primitive com- 
munism. A movement that claims the support 
of the masses, yet deliberately refuses to appeal 
to their ideals and to utilise the power of their 
national traditions for an ulterior development 
that lies entirely on the same lines as those tra- 
ditions, has no right to complain if the national 
community behaves towards it like any living 
organism that obeys the natural law of the elimi- 
nation of foreign bodies. 

But then the word socialism probably means 
something quite different to me than it does to 
them. Socialism in European countries, as Bol- 
shevikism and German social-democracy show, is 
naturally undemocratic to the same extent as the 
government it opposes. Democratic socialism 
can only arise from democratic capitalism, and, 
as far as I am concerned, the war has cured me 
of any possible inclination to believe that social- 
ism is worth striving for unless it be democratic. 

It will have appeared already, from my re- 
marks in a previous chapter about present-day 
democracy being a system of government by the 
minority which makes public opinion, that I am 
not blind to the limitations of even as pure a 
democratic system as that of the American com- 
monwealth. My conclusion then was that the 
great superiority of democracy consisted in its 



IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM 263 

intrinsic tendency to progressive enlightenment 
of the people ruled, and to the numerical in- 
crease of those who are invested with leadership 
because of their abihty to lead — and not because 
of mere chances of fortune or heredity. Pohti- 
cal democracy has not made an earthly paradise 
out of the United States, nor has it even pre- 
vented economic waste, exploitation, poverty, 
corruption, injustice, intolerance, ignorance, and 
all the other social evils inseparable from the very 
existence of economic privilege. Yet, by sup- 
pressing political privilege, it has created an in- 
strument (the only efficient instrument under 
present conditions) by which a nation can grad- 
ually reduce these evils and finally bring about 
the suppression of economic privilege itself. In 
a real democracy the people live under the eco- 
nomic system they deserve, for they have the 
power to change it if they convince the majority 
that such change is desirable. 

Most of the imperfections of American democ- 
racy, however, seem to me to result from the com- 
parative youthfulness of American civilisation. 
To this youthfulness America is largely indebted 
for the wonderful energy and the daring spirit 
of enterprise of its peoples. But the reverse of 
the medal is that America somewhat lacks that 
sense of measure which is a condition to thorough 
discrimination in the sphere of intellectual life 
and to refined taste in that of art. I found evi- 



264 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

dence of this lack of measure, of this exuberance, 
in the attitude towards the war of a very large 
section of the American press and of public opin- 
ion in the summer of 1918. It seemed to me that 
there was then, in the manifestations of national 
hatred, a tendency to sin more against fair dis- 
crimination of judgment and good taste in voic- 
ing the fighting determination of the country 
than was to be found even in those countries, like 
Belgium and Northern France, which had far 
more immediate reasons to be exasperated than 
America. In our European countries, the longer 
duration of the ordeal, the very excess of suffer- 
ing, and the proximity to the fighting front 
(which gave the civilian element a better realisa- 
tion of the tragic earnestness of a soldier's life) 
taught them that restraint and reticence in the 
expression of their hatred best befit those who 
have to leave the actual doing to others. If I 
am to judge by President Wilson's utterances 
against mob rule and spy mania, and by General 
Pershing's reiterated action against the spread- 
ing of tales regarding imaginary atrocities — ^the 
real atrocities were bad enough! — there must 
have been occasions when war enthusiasm in 
America had a tendency to degrade into war hys- 
teria. I myself found some less harmful mani- 
festations of it when travelling through the 
States, for I met a considerable number of vari- 
eties of the species "man in the street" or "man 



m THE LAND OF FREEDOM 265 

in the train" who probably thought they would 
highly please me by telling me how sorry they 
were they could not be "over there"; how nice 
it must be to kill "Boches" at the front every 
day ; and the exact refinement of torture to which 
they would put "Kaiser Bill" and "Little Wil- 
he" if they ever got hold of them. Now, I am 
well aware that the harmless puerility of this and 
some other forms of "Boche-eating" was no ac- 
curate criterion of the real state of mind of the 
people, whom on the whole I found to be inspired 
by a deeper and more ideal realisation of the 
issues at stake than any European nation. Yet 
in France, England or Belgium, the general dis- 
countenancing of all such futile talk would prob- 
ably have made this uninteresting species more 
reticent and less obtrusive than I found it to be 
in America. 

The same weakness of the sense of proportion 
I am inclined to hold responsible for the differ- 
ence between the American and the European 
outlook on art. I purposely use the word differ- 
ence, because I no longer believe, as most Euro- 
peans do, and as I did myself until I visited 
America, in the superiority of European aesthetic 
culture. 

The higher forms of art were inseparable hith- 
erto from the existence of a leisured class. Europe 
has had such classes for centuries; e. g., the hour- 



266 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

geois patricians who gave work to her painters, 
the aristocracy who enabled her musicians to com- 
pose masterpieces, the benefit of which has for- 
tunately become more general and lasting than 
that of the mere charming of their patrons' idle 
hours. Such leisured classes America has never 
had. Indeed, she has hardly had time to start 
an artistic tradition of her own; for even now 
American genius is mostly utilised in the pro- 
duction of material wealth and in scientific re- 
search. The few Americans who are able to win 
leisure from such pursuits usually go to enjoy it 
in Europe. America has no artistic Boheme hke 
the countries of the European continent where 
this is a class by itself. She has excellent paint- 
ers and musicians; but so far they have practi- 
cally all borrowed from the accumulated fund of 
European craftsmanship and tradition. 

All this I think will easily be granted. But it 
does not follow that American artistic culture is 
as a whole inferior to that of Europe. American 
architecture, for instance, has an originahty all 
its own, not only as a science of building, but as 
an art corresponding to the needs and technical 
means of modern hfe. As such, it is much more 
individual, more really artistic, than most mod- 
ern European architecture. The latter is 
cramped to such an extent by conventional 
styles, corresponding to historical epochs and 



IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM 267 

even to climates entirely different from our own, 
that it seems unable to stand the supreme test of 
architectural beauty: perfect adaptation of the 
builder's material to his purpose. Americans 
who want to enjoy the beauty of the classic, the 
mediaeval, or the Renaissance period, will have 
to cross the Atlantic and see Greek and Sicil-^ 
ian temples, Roman arches, Gothic cathedrals, 
French or Enghsh castles and mansions. But 
to me there is more hve beauty in some of the 
American sky-scrapers, at least m those that are 
emancipated from the tyranny of European con- 
vention, than there is in the pretentious, uncom- 
fortable, and pseudo-historical modern buildings, 
lifted, as it were, bodily out of some handbook 
on architecture, and lumped down at haphaz- 
ard in the cities of the Old Continent. Now, 
architecture is an important indication of the 
artistic level of a civilisation. It is the symboHc 
art par excellence, the most direct and the earh- 
est expression of the spirit of an epoch and of a 
people. Moreover, it is the most democratic of 
all arts, since the constant sight of its works by 
the masses is a far more effective means to edu- 
cate their taste than any amount of framed mas- 
terpieces hung up in museums or cabinets. 

Let us ask ourselves by what standard the 
sesthetic level of national culture can be judged. 
Only narrow-minded class prejudice will answer 



268 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

that it is the maximum limit of refinement 
reached by a small minority. Even then, the only 
superiority Europe could claim would be that 
her cultured minority is more numerous than that 
of America; for some of the American connois- 
seurs will prove a match for any European. But 
is not the average degree of culture reached by 
the population at large a much sounder criterion? 
Judged according to this, we shall find Europe's 
present superiority very doubtful indeed. True, 
more good music is produced in Europe's con- 
cert halls and opera-houses, and more good plays 
in her theatres, than on the other side of the 
water. But, in both continents, these only attract 
a small minority. The taste of the vast majority 
of the people in this respect can be best judged 
by the productions of the music-halls, "picture 
shows," and second-class theatres. As far as my 
experience reaches, I am inchned to say that the 
artistic level of these productions is a good deal 
lower in Europe than in America. Again, there 
are fewer pianos and more gramophones in 
American than in European homes; but I can- 
didly confess that I think any real tune played 
on a good gramaphone as enjoyable and as 
profitable to the education of musical taste as 
most of the mediocre piano-rattling which is con- 
sidered to give the finishing touch to the daugh- 
ters of the petty-bourgeoisie of continental 



IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM 269 

Europe, whose supreme ambition is to be able 
to make a sauce hearnaise, to speak a dozen 
words of English sporting slang, and to play a 
"piano-romance" with both hands. 

As to the visual test, I know of none more 
fundamental than the way in which the women 
dress and the people furnish their houses. I am 
here on very controversial ground, yet I venture 
to affirm that American women generally dress 
with more taste than do those of Europe, perhaps 
not even excepting the Parisiennes. With re- 
gard to the furnishing of American homes, I have 
visited enough of all classes on both continents 
to be still more emphatic as to American superi- 
ority in taste in this respect. Much more origi- 
nality is displayed there than in Europe, where 
the tyranny of the conventional "styles" smoth- 
ers every attempt to individuahse or even to con- 
sider practicabihty. There is nothing surprising 
about this if one asks the question whether any 
art can flourish where there is not a minimum of 
air, light, cleanliness and comfort higher than 
that which prevails in the so-called homes of the 
majority of Europe's population. 

No, the relative imperfection of the sense of 
measure and nuances, above referred to, is but 
the price that America pays for her individualism 
and energy. Let her pay it gladly. The weak- 
nesses of youth are the easiest to cure. Say what 



270 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

one will about the difference between American 
and European civilisation, there can only be one 
conclusion: they compare with each other like 
youth and old age. It is not to the latter that the 
future belongs. Of all the lessons of the Great 
War, perhaps none is so incontrovertible as this. 



XI 



THE NEW SOCIALISM 

Quand je serai mort, berger, tu detruiras toutes les vieilles 
semences. Elles sont pleines de poussieres mauvaises; elles sont 
rongees; elles sont moisies. Ce n'est plus avec elles que le sol 
celebrera ses fian9ailles. Et toi qui as ete partout, tu resemeras 
dans mon champ, dans mon clos, des graines nouvelles; des 
graines toutes vives, toutes fraiches, toutes belles, que tu as vues 
et reconnues bonnes, la-bas, aux contrees vierges de la terre. , . • 

Emile Vekhaeeen. Les Auhes, I. 



I CANNOT better synthesise the changes worked 
in my mind by the succession of experiences de- 
scribed in the previous chapters than by setting 
forth what are now my views on the task of the 
labor movement. 

Whether the ascent of labour to political power, 
which in Europe at least is synonymous with the 
triumph of sociahsm, be viewed with sympathy 
or not, does not alter the fact that it must now 
be reckoned with as a near probabihty. The 
Russian Soviet Republic, Germany, German- 
Austria and Hungary are already under the 
socialist rule. In most of the other European 
countries, especially those where industriahsm is 
highly developed, like England or Belgium, the 
socialist labour movement is progressing with 
such gigantic strides, and deriving such an in- 

271 



272 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

creased impetus from the growing amount of 
social discontent resulting from the economic 
after-effects of the war, that the time seems close 
at hand when the majority of European coun- 
tries will have socialist governments. 

The remaking of the world, or at least of 
Europe, which the war has rendered unavoidable 
appears much less as the rearrangement of fron- 
tiers or the creation of new juridical forms for 
the settlement of international disputes, than as 
a reforming of the social institutions and of the 
public spirit of which the war itself was a result. 

I would not have thought it worth while to 
retrace the remaking of one mind out of milHons, 
if I had not considered it as a clue, however small 
and imperfect, to the remaking of the collective 
mind that is in its turn to cause the remaking of 
the world. If it be true then that the compulsion 
of historical causes, which can no longer be con- 
trolled by any human being, is going to entrust 
socialism with this task, let us try to discern the 
main characteristics of post-war socialism. 

One outstanding fact strikes us at once. 
European socialism has no longer the unity it 
seemed to have before the war. There are two 
antagonistic conceptions, between which the 
abyss is widening more and more every day. 
There is Bolshevikism, which believes in the 
establishment of socialism through the dictator- 



THE NEW SOCIALISM 273 

ship of force; and there is democratic social- 
ism, which conceives sociahsm as the outcome of 
the freely expressed will of a majority. The 
despotic form of the new social order prevails in 
the countries of Eastern and Central Europe 
where previously autocratic despotism ruled; 
democratic socialism is predominant in the demo- 
cratic states of Western Europe. 

Eolshevikism and anarchy may be a necessary, 
though painful, stage in the development of the 
eastern half of Europe from despotism to free- 
dom, justifying Nietzsche's saying that there 
must be chaos, so that from this chaos new stars 
may arise. To democratic countries, however, it 
rightly appears as a danger, for it is destructive 
of that very freedom which is the motive power 
of their progressive development. 

Yet Eolshevikism is not by any means confined 
to Eastern and Central Europe. It exists, as a 
latent or an active force, wherever, through ex- 
cess of grievances or lack of adequate machinery 
for their adjustment, conditions obtain that make 
the masses despair of any other means of redress 
save the spontaneous use of violence. Even in 
the United States, and apart from alien move- 
ments like that of the Sociahst Party, there are 
sporadic outbreaks of Eolshevikism. They are 
the morbid reactions of such exceptional indig- 
enous conditions as those to which rehable social 



274. THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

observers and the Federal authorities themselves 
attribute the I. W. W. movement in the migra- 
tory industries of the West. In Europe, where 
this war has left the victorious peoples in a state 
of impoverishment and demorahsation even worse 
than that suffered by defeated peoples in any pre- 
vious war, the germs of Bolshevikism are as wide- 
spread as those of Spanish influenza. 

We shall doubtless have at least two "Interna- 
tionales" instead of, as before the war, only one. 
There will be that of the Bolshevik labour move- 
ment, which wiU probably label itself "commu- 
nist," and that of the democratic socialists. The 
former will comprise the majorities of Eastern 
Europe and the minorities — originally gathered 
together by the Zimmerwald "internationalist" 
movement — of the other countries. The latter 
will mainly differ from the old "Internationale" 
(essentially a European organisation dominated 
by German social-democracy) in the predomi- 
nance of the Anglo-Saxon element and view- 
point. This will shift its moral centre of gravity 
westward and render extra-European expansion 
more feasible than it was with the old "Interna- 
tionale." 

Although there are already many objective in- 
dications of what the spirit of this "western" In- 
ternationale is likely to be, conditions are still so 
unsettled that it is impossible to state its charac- 



THE NEW SOCIALISM 275 

teristics without making large allowances for the 
inaccuracy of one's individual outlook. Yet I 
think I may say that at the utmost only mere 
shades of opinion differentiate my personal view- 
point from that of the Belgian Labour Party as 
a whole, and from the opinions of men as repre- 
sentative of post-war democratic socialism as the 
Belgian Vandervelde, the Frenchman Albert 
Thomas, the Englishman Arthur Henderson, or 
the Swede Hjalmar Branting. My own mental 
evolution can therefore be taken as to some ex- 
tent characteristic of the general revision of dem- 
ocratic sociahsm in Europe. 

The outstanding feature of this new socialism 
seems to me the recognition of the essential im- 
portance of pohtical democracy. This, first of 
all, refers to the method by which a new social 
order is to be brought about; i. e., the gradual 
seizure of political power through propaganda 
aimed at forming a majority. But it also means 
that this new social order must be based on the 
principle of government by the consent of the 
governed, with all the correctives to unbounded 
majority-rule imphed by the constitutionally 
safeguarded liberties of opinion, press, speech, 
and opposition by representative bodies. Only 
the continual and indefinite development of such 
liberties, and the making of their organisation 
more and more adequate to the intricacy of mod- 



276 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

ern administration, can prevent socialism from 
turning into a form of despotism. And a despot- 
ism such as this would entrust a tyrannic and 
incapable officialdom with a power more absolute 
than that of any Czar, since it would fetter not 
only the pohtical, but also the economic, destinies 
of the people. 

There is no worse menace to democratic so- 
ciahsm than State sociahsm, which seems to be 
the aim of the socialists in Central and Eastern 
Europe. The tendency towards state sociahsm 
is incidentally aggravated by three circum- 
stances common at present to all European 
countries: the crisis in parliamentarianism, the 
danger of bureaucracy, and the lack of adminis- 
trative abihty among the masses. 

Russia is a warning of the menace to economic 
Hfe, and to civihsation in general, that hes in the 
ascent to power of masses who in their normal 
conditions of hfe have never been given opportu- 
nity to acquire that ixdnimum of knowledge and 
administrative capacity without which govern- 
ment becomes technically impossible. This dan- 
ger is less, of course, in the rest of Europe, yet 
everywhere the actual power of labour, both in 
the pohtical and industrial field, has a tendency to 
increase faster than its administrative capacity. 
My position as chief of the Belgian Labour 
Party's educational department (which aimed at 
reducing this very discrepancy) has taught me 



THE NEW SOCIALISM 277 

that even the empiric education which thousands 
of workingmen get through their practical ac- 
tivity in the trade union and co-operative move- 
ments is powerless to achieve this end. On 
the minds of most of these men — whom the care- 
lessness of pubhc authorities has left scandalously- 
ignorant — this activity of a very restricted range 
during a few leisure hours has, rather, a narrow- 
ing effect, which only a better general education 
in public schools and through the labour move- 
ment's own institutions can counterbalance. The 
Belgian socialist, Emile Vandervelde, was think- 
ing of this widespread ignorance when he once 
said that he wished his party to be put as late as 
possible "through the ordeal of pohtical power." 
This problem calls all the more for solution as 
the crisis in West-European parhamentarianism 
makes it clearer every day that the abilities re- 
quired by a government, in the increasingly broad 
sense which this term assumes, are very different 
from those that adorn the lawyers who make such 
beautiful speeches in our Parliaments. Too long 
has parhamentarianism been confused with de- 
mocracy. European experience shows more and 
more that parhamentarianism is but one aspect, 
and that not even an essential one, of the self- 
government of nations. The intricacy of admin- 
istrative problems grows as the field of state and 
municipal activity expands and as business effi- 



278 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

ciency requires an increasing division of func- 
tions and individual responsibility. The role of 
ministers is practically reduced to that of politi- 
cal liaison-agents between the administrative, the 
legislative, and the executive powers. Their for- 
mer activity as leaders of their administration 
has become a myth. Where public bodies man- 
age economic undertakings, they have as a rule 
proved inefficient and wasteful until it was real- 
ised — as, indeed, only a minority of European 
governments have realised as yet — that the au- 
thority of parliamentary bodies in such cases has 
had to be reduced to a mere power of censure, 
whilst the technical leaders responsible had to be 
given an administrative autonomy similar to that 
which obtains in private businesses. In parlia- 
mentary life itself, the party system has fossil- 
ised and the original procedure has turned into 
an instrument of professional intrigue to such 
an extent that it has become a check on progres- 
sive legislation. More and more, therefore, re- 
course to the plebiscite seems to be the only way 
of securing adequate expression of the popular 
will as to the merits of any legislative measure 
that may be proposed. 

Therefore the new socialism cannot confine its 
aim to the extension of the rights of public bodies 
in the field of economics. There is probably now 
in the main European countries a majority con- 



THE NEW SOCIALISM 279 

vinced that private property in land and in the 
principal means of production and transport is 
no longer justified. It has resulted in parasitism 
and monopoly, and lost the impetus originally 
derived from "free competition." There seems 
to be no alternative left but to nationalise such 
land properties as are not used by their proprie- 
tors themselves, and to estabhsh pubhc ownership 
of railroads, mines, and monopolised industries 
generally. Pre-war socialism was wont to con- 
ceive this socialisation as a very easy process. It 
simply meant that the State would have recourse 
to expropriation, with or without indemnity, or 
by the help of devices like the single-tax system, 
and estabhsh itself as the manager of the prop- 
erties thus acquired. Not much thought was 
given to the changes that would have to take 
place in the organisation of the State itself in 
order to fit it for such a task; a mere quantitative 
extension of parliamentary rule was all that was 
considered necessary. 

But now that socialism has exchanged the 
stage of doctrinal criticism and propaganda for 
that of reahsation, it can no longer remain bhnd 
to the fact that if the State, as it exists today, 
were to be made both the owner of such a large 
proportion of the national wealth and manager 
of its production, it would only be putting an end 
to some of the abuses of private monopoly in 



280 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

order to increase others. Above all, this might 
well result in such inefficiency that the output 
would be seriously reduced, to the loss of the 
community in general. 

Now that this problem is beginning to be seri- 
ously tackled, as Emile Vandervelde has re- 
cently done in his book, "Socialism versus State," 
it is being realised that some indispensable safe- 
guard of efficiency and real democratic control 
must be secured before any further extension of 
pubhc ownership takes place. The right of own- 
ership can, apparently, be left to the State with- 
out great difficulty, but not the management. 
This should be given over to public bodies, under 
the ultimate control of national legislation. But 
a considerable amount of administrative auton- 
omy must be given and the collaboration of those 
actually engaged in the work of production with 
its local management must be allowed for. The 
movement towards industrial democracy, to 
which war conditions have universally given such 
a strong impetus, shows how this collaboration 
can be organised. 

The progress of labour unionism has already 
led, in quite a number of trades, to a point where 
conditions of labour are no longer autocratically 
fixed by the employer, but — through the instru- 
mentality of collective bargaining, shop steward- 
ship, factory constitutions, etc. — ^by joint bodies 



THE NEW SOCIALISM 281 

representing both the employer and the em- 
ployed. My study of industrial management in 
the United States and abroad has convinced me 
that this is really the only means by which satis- 
factory conditions of labour can be provisionally 
secured, and increased productivity attained, 
without augmenting the individual strain. When 
labour has no longer to come to terms with a 
"boss" who is at the same time owner and mana- 
ger, the problems of organised collaboration be- 
tween the management and the managed will be 
a good deal easier to solve. The State will then 
have to intervene only to prevent industrial de- 
mocracy from turning into a guild system for 
the exploitation of the community either through 
too low efficiency or too high prices. 

Personally I would go even further and at 
least as a transition give the preference to a sys- 
tem of competitive and experimental socialisa- 
tion, in which the State would not appear as an 
expropriator save in cases of absolute necessity, 
where no loss of productivity is to be feared, like 
the suppression of parasitic landlordism. Where 
industrial production is concerned, I think the 
most effective way to establish forms of pubhc 
ownership and democratic management would be 
to make the State — or, rather, a democratically 
controlled pubhc body especially equipped for 
this task by the State — the competitor of private 
enterprise, which would be deprived of its mo- 



282 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

nopoly by such competition. Thus the evils of 
private enterprise* could be ultimately suppressed 
without losing the benefit of the incentive to effi- 
cient management and high output which lies in 
competition, whilst the experimental character 
of the undertaking would facilitate the gradual 
adaptation of the new administrative organisation 
to the economic needs of the case. We are faced 
with the obvious impossibility of preventing Eu- 
ropean officialdom from becoming an obstacle to 
progress and efficiency wherever the incentive of 
competition is eliminated and popular control be- 
comes increasingly difficult to organise. And it 
is this that makes me think that some sort of pro- 
cedure such as that suggested will most likely 
have to be adopted by democratic socialism when 
it gets to work on the task of socialisation. 

The rise of capitahsm has deprived the major- 
ity of the control of the means of production they 
are using; it has lengthened the hours of work 
beyond the measure compatible with hygiene, 
happiness and culture ; it has pauperised artisans 
and peasants ; it has sent the women and children 
into the hell of factory life ; it has threatened to 
turn civilisation into a slag heap by robbing hu- 
manity of the joy of life, the beauty of leisure, 
and the belief in an ideal purpose. But it has 
also given humanity the disposal of an accumula- 
tion of material wealth sufficient to bestow com- 



THE NEW SOCIALISM 283 

fort and the possibility of happiness on all; it 
has created machinery by which the human effort 
necessary to maintain and augment this wealth 
can be indefinitely reduced so as to leave more 
time for the pursuit of higher purposes ; it has — 
by building railroads and steamships, weaving a 
network of telegraphic and telephonic lines about 
the earth, and making the air itself a means of 
communication between countries and continents 
— turned the whole world into one great commu- 
nity of interests and desires. Moreover, whilst 
dragging the artisan away from his own shop and 
the peasant from his ancestral field in order to 
compel them to sell the strength of their bodies 
on the market, it has unwittingly smashed the 
chains of slavery, serfdom and guild-tyranny, 
and made men potentially free and equal mem- 
bers of the poHtical commonwealth, so that de- 
mocracy and the power of the masses to control 
their own destiny have become possible. Capi- 
tahsm has, in a word, made feasible the boundless 
expansion of forces and ideals which are man- 
kind's weapons in the war "that is a longer and 
greater one than any." 

The new socialism should, therefore, be more 
than an antithesis to capitalism. It should be, 
and I think it will be, a synthesis making the in- 
centive of competition and the constant increase 
of human productivity, which we owe to capi- 



284 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

talism, serve the ideals of freedom, equality of 
rights and chances, and universal solidarity, 
which we owe to democracy. Only thus can the 
reconciliation of the two equally vital, but still 
antagonistic, principles of individual liberty and 
social unity be effected. 

The doctrine of this socialism will not waive the 
benefit which the theoricians of the old "Inter- 
nationale" derived from the use of the Marxian 
method of interpreting history in the light of 
economic facts. But here, too, it will have to 
synthesise. It will have to recognise that the 
economic interpretation of history shows but one 
of the strands out of which the texture of human 
adventure is woven. It is as silly to reduce (as 
most dogmatic Marxians do) the influence of 
individuaUty, human ideals, religion, mass psy- 
chology ; of the progress of science, art and liter- 
ature, and so forth, to a mere reflex of the preva- 
lent mode of production of a period, as it would 
be to conceive man as homo economicus, a puppet 
animated only by the strings of the economic in- 
terests proper to its social class. 

The war has shown that the Marxian theory 
of the class struggle needs revision. It remains 
true that the antagonism of economic class inter- 
ests is an essential motive of the conflicts through 
which progress realises itself. But there is also 
a large, a much larger field than pre-war social- 



THE NEW SOCIALISM 285 

ism believed, where the interests of all classes co- 
incide. To this common interest appeal should 
be made, as well as to class interest. The whole 
community has the same concern that hygienic 
conditions should be such as to prevent the 
spreading of plagues ; that a minimum of pubHc 
education should be provided for all; that cities 
should be suppHed with food, fuel, water, fresh 
air, and light; that justice and pohce should keep 
the law established by the popular will; that 
means of transport and communication should 
exist ; that street traffic should be regulated, fires 
and floods fought, navigation made secure, and a 
thousand other things. Do not these bring it 
about that even the poorest labourer finds him- 
self bound in every occurrence of his daily life 
by at least as many ties of interest to the com- 
munity as a whole as to his fellow-workers with 
whom he is united by class sohdarity? Is there 
not a common interest of humanity that the world 
should be made to produce as much wealth as 
possible, and that the productivity of human 
labour should be increased? Is it in the interest 
of the proletariat alone that the wholesale de- 
struction of life and property caused by war 
should be prevented; or does not this object 
rather unite the immense majority of all nations 
against a few profiteers? Finally, do we not see 
labour itself, when compelled to threaten a cessa- 



286 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

tion of work for the improvement of its condi- 
tion, constantly appealing to the interest of the 
community at large to avoid a stoppage of pro- 
duction or of transport and to bring the pressure 
of public opinion to bear upon stubborn em- 
ployers? If this be so, then the theory of the 
labour movement must be put in accordance with 
the practice. Thus, the doctrine of class solidar- 
ity should be complemented by that of social 
solidarity, and the appeal to the common interest 
of all, or nearly all, be made the dominant motive 
of a movement that, being essentially democratic, 
aims at rallying to its side the majority of the 
people. 

Even the mischievous abuse of the watchwords 
Law and Order, to justify ruthless oppression 
or the suppression of minorities, need not pre- 
vent socialists from stating openly and sincerely 
that they intend to reach their aims not by the 
use of violence, but by the legal and orderly con- 
quest of the will of the maj ority. It is of the very 
essence of democracy that rebellion is a sacred 
right, nay a duty, should a minority try to impose 
itself upon the majority by misusing the power 
which it derives from social privileges or from 
its superior material strength. The same apphes 
to a minority, if the majority break the consti- 
tution in order to deprive it of the use of the legal 
means which may enable it in turn to become a 



THE NEW SOCIALISM 287 

majority. But apart from these eases, it is in 
the pubhe interest that the law which expresses 
the popular will should be respected, and all dis- 
turbances, which may result in loss of wealth or 
life, avoided. 

Russia shows that the problem confronting 
labour is not only how to get control of the in- 
strument of production and public administra- 
tion, but also to see to it that this instrument is 
adequate in itself and that the very method by 
which it is seized does not put it out of use. Brit- 
ish Fabianism, which I confess to have treated 
(like most other pre-war socialists on the Euro- 
pean continent) with undeserved contempt as a 
hobby of the dilettanti of officialdom, hereby 
proves that it was in the right in studying prob- 
lems of administration at a time when the likeli- 
hood that these problems would affect the labour 
movement seemed very remote. Something more 
than study of, the problem is, however, required, 
namely, the recognition of the fact that both the 
pohtical and the industrial pohcy of labour must 
be so directed as to insure the improvement of 
the technical means of production and adminis- 
tration at the same time as their control gradu- 
ally passes into its hands. 

The expectation that the New Socialism will 
be pragmatic and practical, even as pre-war 
socialism was dogmatic and sectarian, is mainly 



288 THE REMAKING OF A MIND 

justified by the shifting of the new "Internation- 
ale's" centre of gravity from the Russian and 
German East to the Anglo-Saxon West. Iri the 
East, the predominant form of pre-war socialism 
was pohtical and theoretical; in the West, it has 
always rested on the sohd foundation of the 
trade union movement. Trade unionism, with 
its daily pursuit of immediate improvements and 
its widespread creation of effective responsibil- 
ity, develops a much more reahstic spirit than did 
the more academic and less responsible doctrinal 
or electoral propaganda which was the main 
manifestation of German and Russian socialism. 
The meetings of the old "Internationale" usu- 
ally showed a disagreeable predominance of the 
professional pohtician and of the crank; the new 
"Internationale" of democratic socialism prom- 
ises to be democratic in this also, that it will be 
more representative of the fundamental aspira- 
tions of the masses than of the ambitions of self- 
styled leaders. 

It will be worth what the masses themselves 
are worth. Will they save Europe from the 
decay that threatens her, and once again fashion 
a new civilisation upon her ancient hallowed soil? 
I do not know. But this I know, that if labour 
does not save her nothing will. Labour is the 
only element that can give her the unity she 
needs. 



THE NEW SOCIALISM 289 

I have purposely restricted my remarks about 
post-war socialism to a broad sketch. I am not 
a builder of formulse. I have lost my faith in 
them. They are good only to be knocked over 
by facts. I wanted to depict a state of mind 
rather than to draft a programme. It seems 
less important to me that we should get hypno- 
tised by the dogm^e of partisan politics than that 
we should evolve, with those who have to play 
a part in the remaking of the old world, the new 
state of mind that is needed to help humanity 
recover the control of its destinies. 



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